yiopeseraess ba rrpenesorepers 
sotterirabiegersoressiesewe 
pat? : 


i 


1 pe OH 
sie lel Ave (A> 
. am Ria Ve ha 


: us TT 
Vale re Pah url 


j 
Us] 

rn ' 
i 


aire) 
AW )+ a) 


Shall We Believe 


| In a 


Divine Providence? | 


| By D. W. FAUNCE, DD. 


Author of “Prayer asa Theory and a Fact”? 


FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 


1900 


COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY 


FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
[Printed in the United States of America] 


To 
MARY E. T. FAUNCE 


Benigna que nos conjunxit 
Providentia sustinet et sustinebit 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/shallwebelievein0Ofaun 


PREPARATORY NOTE 


Those who read this little volume mainly 
for devotional and consolatory purposes can 
pass from the first chapter dire@tly to the 
fourth—omitting the second and third, at 
least until they have finished the rest of the 
book. But others, who may crave a distin@ly 
logical order of discussion, will desire, as basal 
to all that can be offered, to stop a little over 
the matters presented in those two chapters. 
They will wish to know what is to be said on 
the question of whether this world about us is 
correlated, in some orderly fashion, with our 
own fundamental ideas of mentality and moral- 
ity. If it shows that mind has been at work, 
then since all mentality and all morality are of 
the same kind, whether in God or in man, 
there will seem to all such readers a thorough 
basis, not only in the intelletual and moral 
realms, but in the physical realm also, for our 
belief in a God whose Providence is not only 
over, but in all the world. ‘The discussion is 
necessarily brief on these two topics; but it is 
hoped that it is sufficiently full for the end 
intended, and is in accord with the method of 
argument used by our best modern thinkers. 

The book makes no attempt to solve all the 

5 


6 Divine Providence 


mysteries of Providence. It even holds that 
mystery in part, during this present life, is it- 
self a providential arrangement; giving, as it 
does, room for trustfulness and incentive to 
courage. But there are some very serious 
misunderstandings which make for men a 
needless and harmful mystery; and the 
attempt is made to lift some of these denser 
shadows, which are cast more by our human 
mistake than by anything which the Divine 
wisdom sends upon us. ‘The more nearly we 
can come into the position where we see things 
as through the eye of God, the clearer and 
wider will be our vision. And tho in any 
world enough must be hidden from the finite 
to call for trustfulness in the Infinite One, yet 
on the other hand we ought to know all we 
can about the leadings of the Divine Provi- 
dence in human affairs. 
D. W. F 
Providence, R. J. 


CONTENTS 


I,—The Questions Involved. 


A rational and moral order of the world a funda- 
mental question. Is Providence concerned with 
both things and men; with prominent men only, 
or all men? 13. Must we subtract evil things 
fromthings called providential? 14. Difficulty of 
human view alone, when God is also a factor. 
15. Description here the best definition. 15. The 
Divine immanence as well as the Divine tran- 
scendence in Providence. 16. Is the end in 
Providence, not the world, nor yet man; but is 
God His own final end? 17. 


II.—Is There a Rational Order in the World P 


Perplexing things raise doubt. 18. But many 
things once in chaos now incosmos. 1g. The 
more laws, the more proof of a God who made 
and who works them providentially. 20. The 
disorder sometimes more apparentthanreal. 21. 
Bushnell on perfect adaptation of the world to 
the fact of sin. 23. Vast preponderance onthe 
side of the orderly and rational. 23. But one 
instance of rational order settles the whole mat- 
ter. 24. Correspondence between our orderly 
way of thinking and the world about us. 26. 
Cause everywhere is in will. 27. The external 
world constructed on the plane of reason and will, 
as far as we can understand it. 28, 29. 


8 


Divine Providence 


IlI.—Is There a Moral Order of Things? 


Whence the moral idea of ‘‘the right and the 
wrong”’ in anything? 30. Four answers: (a). 
Education; but educationa process not a faculty. 
31. (4). Pleasure to oneself. 31. (c). General 
happiness—but Mr. Mill’s personal contradic- 
tion. 32. (d) General usefulness—but ‘‘the 
right” and ‘‘the useful” parallel, and so not 
identical. 33. (e). The fourth theory—right- 
eousness; the soul’s detection by its own law of 
a quality called ‘‘the right.” 34. This does 
not make man infallibly ~ight any more than his 
intellectual judgment before the law of ‘“‘the 
true” makes him infallibly true. 36. Each 
man thus a bit of the moral universe. 37. 
*“Right” a conviction rather than an opinion. 
37 We use the moral lawof ‘‘ the right” every 
day. 38. God and man doing moral work inthe 
use of the material things of the world. 39. 
Fiske on the unseen moral world. 42. Con- 
science both detective and prophetic. 44. 


IV.—Is There a Providence in Individual Life? 


Objection from the insignificance of man as 
against the greatness of God. 45-46. The real 
comparison is not between physical in man and 
vastness of the physical universe, but between 
the spiritual in God and in man. 47. God 
may have wished to reveal Himself through man. 
47. Would show infinite condescension. 48. 
Each man related to God’s moral government, 
and hence great, and worth providential notice, 
53. By original endowment “little lower 
than God.” 54. Man’s twofold nature. 54a 22148 
infinite convictions (a) of finiteness. 55. (d). 
Of infinite aspiration. 58. (c). Of self-hood. 59. 


Contents 9 


(dz). Of immortal morality. 60. Man’s nature 
great enough to be entered by the Only Begotten 
Son. 62. The religious consciousness of emi- 
nently spiritual men on providential guidance. 
64-66. 


V.—lIs the Race-Bond a Providential Blessing ? 


The solidarity of the human race. 67. Inher- 
ited dispositions an objection to this providential 
plan. 68. Great suffering through heredity— 
national and personal, 69. But, far less 
suffering than if we had been separate Adams. 
71. Better opportunity to benefit men. 71. The 
family a factor of opportunity. 72. God’s pro- 
vidential plan uses heredity. 74. Because of 
the race-bond, Jesus Christ is one of us. 78. 


VI.—Is There a Providence in National History? 


God’s ordinance of society. 79. Intended Di- 
vine emphasis in national affairs. 81. The 
Old Testament history an object-lesson on 
national morals. 83. Progressive history. 
84. God’s hand always on it. 85. Destruc- 
tion of French chivalry. 86. Emergence at fit 
periods of great men. 88. Spanish Armada. 
89. Conspiracy of circumstances under Divine 
guidance. 90. William of Orange and English 
history. 93. National life used in providential 
advancement of the world. 098. 


VII.—Providence and Natural Law. 


Prof. Chace’s oration on Divine Providence as 
related to physicallaw. 101. Two ideas newly 
emphasized since his day—evolution and imma- 
mence. 101, 102. He held no change possible in 
physical realm, but changes possible in moral 


10 Divine Providence 


realm. 103. His definition is that great things 
were originally provided for, and these not to be 
considered as providences. 104. Objections. 
1. Great things so many, no place of any impor- . 
tance for providences. 107. 2. No line can be : 
drawn between great and small events. 108. se 
His theory makes natural law inviolable. 109. 
4. God anywhere is God everywhere in Provi- | 
dence. 110,111. 5. Place must be left for the 
heart as well as the hand of God in providential 
activity. 115, 117. 


VIII.—Divine Providence and Human Pain. 


Doubt suggested by the prevalence of pain. 118, ; 
But problem lightened by some considerations. 

I. Physical environment not normal, hence pain. 

I2I. 2. Capacity for pleasure, equally capacity 

for pain. 122. 3. Race-bond, tho on the whole 

a blessing, brings pain. 123. 4. Any system ) 
will have its frictions, hence pain. 124. 5. Mis- 
understanding of Providence brings pain. 125. 
Pain as related to sin—sin, not pain, the real 
trouble. 126. Sin not a necessity of human 
nature. 127. Three purposes of pain, (2). Pun- 
itive. 129. (4). Disciplinary, asin growth. 132. 
(c). Vicarious (1) as in another’s stead. 135. 
(2). For another’s good. 137. Christ the ex- 
ample in both. 138. 


IX.—Incidental Uses of Pain. 


Pain in the lower animals. 140. Infidel viewas 
given by Maudsley. 141. Christian view as 
given by Bushnell. 142. Naturalistic view as 
given by Mill. 143. Naturalistic view fails— 
superficial. 145. Solidarity of man correlated 
with solidarity of the world. 146. Anticipa- 


Contents 11 


tions, therefore, of man’s sin—Bushnell, Dor- 
ner. 147. Pain in lower beings shows: 1. The 
significanceof man. 148. 2. Emphasizes man’s 
moral'work. 149. 3. Makes sin conspicuous. 
149. The struggle to be better. 150. But this 
no philosophy of the world. 151. Browning’s 
theory of ‘‘effort the all’’—defective by being 
only partial. 152. Pain awakes human sympa- 
thy. 153. 


X.—Providence in Redemptive Sorrow. 


Christianity a system of facts providentially ad- 
ministered. 155. It did not make the sad facts 
it finds and owns. 156. It finds the earliest his- 
toric man with neither more or less moral powers 
than those found to-day. 156. Rousseau’s opti- 
mism followed by modern pessimism. 157. Down- 
ward tendencies in a being made for upward ten- 
dencies. 159. Over against this, the redemptive 
idea. 160. The coming of Jesus anew element. 
161. His mission one of suffering. 163. Re- 
demption by sorrow the keynote of the moral 
universe. 162. Such suffering is glorious, 164. 
This the reason why best men suffer. 166. Sor- 
row changed to joy by its moral use. 


XI.—The Christian Theory of Providence. 


Christian theory over against the Confucian. 
169. Christian theory over against the Zoroas- 
trian. 170, Christian theory over against the 
Buddhistic. 171. Christian theory over against 
the Egyptian. 173. Christian theory over 
against the RomanandGrecian. 174. Christian 
theory over against the Hebrew. 175. Chris- 
tian theory over against the medieval belief in 
undue Satanic influence. 176. The Divine 


12 Divine Providence 


Fatherhood because of the Divine Sonship of 
Jesus Christ. 178. Explains more mysteries. 
181. 


XII.—The Interpretation of Providence. 


Most mistakes made by an outward rather than 
inward interpretation. 182. Yet God may use 
the outward. 183. Can not always trace close 
and immediate relation. 184. Penalties or 
awards may be for a time withheld in physical 
and even in spiritual realm. 185. Two extremes. 
186. Hebrew prophets teach us interpretation. 
186. Christ’s interpretation. 190. Interpreta- 
tions made wisely along the trend of God’s moral 
ends. 192. 


XINI.—Future Providential Disclosures. 


1. This world has a future—poets. 193. Prog- 
ress in moral thinking shows the world’s ad- 
vancement achieved and tocome. 194. (az). The 
new emphasis on new virtues. 195. (4) the 
““ discovery of the individual.” 196. (c) Higher 
ideals culminating in Christ. 197. Christ’s doc- 
trine of ‘‘the Kingdom.” 198. 2. Hach man has 
animmortal future. 199. Then only can questions 
be answered fully. or, 


ee a a a a 
ee ee 


SHALL WE BELIEVE INA 
DIVINE PROVIDENCE? 


I 
THE QUESTIONS INVOLVED 


ARE we warranted in believing that there is 
a Divine Providence which not only presides 
over the world but which pervades it? Is 
there a rational and also a moral order of the 
world, and so a providential order? Does this 
Providence work itself out not only in those 
great events which determine human welfare, 
but also in those usually called trivial? Does 
it pertain to men as well as to things? Does 
it concern itself not only with prominent lives 
but with those also that are obscure? Does it 
notice all men as all, or does it notice each as 
each, and so all? There comes up also the 
question of a Providence as only over the good 
man or as over both the good man and the bad 
man. Wecan not but ask whether we must 
separate events, assigning some of them toa 
Divine Providence and others to an evil 
agency; and whether what we ascribe to this 

18 


14 Divine Providence 


evil agency, be it human or be it superhuman, 
is to be so much subtracted from the Divine 
and Providential ordering of human affairs. 
There is the additional inquiry about the rela- 
tion of this Providence to physical law and to 
human freedom. And we can not help asking 
whether, with some, we are to call only glad 
events providences, or, with others, to speak 
only of bereavements and deaths under that 
designation. Is this Providence specific, or is it 
collective? Does it vary in intensity with the 
varying hours of individual lives and with the 
varying epochs of the life of the race? Is it 
specially concerned in startling events and in 
greatest emergencies, or is it a steady potency 
for all occasions? Under what circumstances 
are we warranted in interpreting it as working 
here for the punishment of a sin and there for 
the reward of a virtue; or must we refrain 
from any interpretation at all? When shall 
we regard it as penal because it inflicts suffer- 
ing on sin; when disciplinary because it seeks 
the welfare of the sufferer, and when vicarious 
because it seeks others’ good? Such are some 
of the questions that inevitably present them- 
selves when we would give this subject any 
careful study. 

Like all other matters in which God is a 
factor, there is here also a difficulty arising 
from our human limitations, when we would 
construct a perfect theory or formulate an exact 


The Questions Involved 15 


definition. And the difficulty is peculiarly 
great when we remember not only that the 
main factor is the Infinite God but that man is 
another factor, just as real tho finite; and 
that, whereas they act sometimes in conscious 
harmony, they may sometimes act in conscious 
antagonism on the plane of admitted freedom, 
while on the plane of ultimate Divine over- 
ruling and purpose the mode of this action is 
beyond our ken. It is a further difficulty that 
this Providence is seen as yet only in process 
for the most part, and not in completion. It 
has even been asserted that a degree of ignor- 
ance on our part is needed in order to secure 
the exercise of certain grand probationary 
virtues.” 

If all this be so, then those who insist that 
any discussion of Providence shall start in an 
exact and complete definition, are asking what 
God only can furnish. So wide is the subject 
itself, so many are the ways in which men ap- 
proach it, so various are the questions—some 
few of which on a former page have been enu- 
merated, that anything beyond a merely tenta- 
tive definition is always unsatisfactory. De- 
scription, as on many similar questions, such 
as Divine revelation and Divine inspiration, is 

* Some say Creation’s meant to show Him forth, 
I say it’s meant to hide Him all it can; 
And that’s what all the blessed evil’s for. 


Its use is to environ us, 
—Browning in ‘‘ Bishop Blougram’s Apology.” 


16 Divine Providence 


better. For, to one man, Providence means 
the ultimate end toward which things are 
working ; to another, the processes of evolu- 
tion, in accordance with which things are car- 
ried on; to another, it means the alleged inter- 
ferences of God in events which occur outside 
of known law; and to yet another, Providence 
means the power that carries on the processes 
or thrusts in the interposing hand, and so se- 
cures the designed end. But any Providence 
that could be comprehended perfectly, and so 
be perfectly defined, would hardly be Divine 
Providence. 

If we should go further, and think of God 
as not only the worker, but as Himself His 
own final end, if we should describe Provi- 
dence as having, not the physical world, nor 
yet man as the ultimate aim, and if we should 
make ‘‘ God all and in all,’’ He Himself His 
own highest end in all working, then the 
whole wide scheme and each of its separate 
parts, are lifted to the highest conceivable 
position. Can there be a loftier conception 
than this—‘‘ the final end of the Universe ts 
God ?”? 

And if God is His own final end, and all 
things and all men are but ministers to such a 
grand result, then there is need of a peculiarly 
devout mood of mind in any one who would 
study these problems of the Divine evolu- 
tion of God’s plan. Only a man with the firm- 


The Questions Tuvolved 17 


est belief in God, a belief that is rooted deep 
in his moral nature, and is the result of per- 
sonal religious experience, is in a position to 
find the truth in such studies. He must be 
able to say not only that there is a God, but 
with the devout Hebrew singer, to say ‘‘ Ify 
God’ with all fervency, and feeling, and em- 
phasis of utterance. He must have learned 
the secret of living the life hidden with Christ 
in God. He must have had borne in upon his 
soul the sense ofa Divine Presence. And thus 
prepared, he can receive the profound satisfac- 
tions that come to the whole moral nature 
when in the close touch of sympathy with an 
Ever-Present God. 

By all means, the mathematical mind for the 
study of mathematics. By all means, the scien- 
tific mind and processes for the study of science, 
and the philosophic mind for the study of 
philosophy. And so, by all means, let us have 
the devout heart for the study of this profound 
problem of religion. The ‘‘ scientific method ”’ 
would be as absurd in philosophy as the poetic 
mood in mathematics. A man must have 
strenuous moral mood and be in closest sym- 
pathy with his God, in order to obtain the best 
results. 

There still will be these questions for the 
logical nature to consider. ‘They will press 
just as hard. Mental satisfactions will still be 
craved. The moral assurance is, indeed, very 


18 Divine Providence 


real. If there are questions that in the nature 
of the casecan not be solved, the healthy mind 
accepts that fact ; but the soul is none the less 
sure of its conclusions. In any direction in 
which there is hope for even partial light, in- 
tellectual inquiries will be pushed to the ut- 
most. ‘he work of adjusting head to heart 
is laid on such a man. But he will be in a 
position to study these questions with a mind 
none the less clear because he cherishes a de- 
vout spirit. 


II 


IS THERE A RATIONAL ORDER 
IN THE WORLD? 


It can not be denied that some things in 
the world are to us very strange and are 
“apparently unreasonable. Putting stress on 
these untoward events, there are men who 
declare that whatever ‘‘those living in the 
quiet air of delightful studies’’ may say, prac- 
tical men out in the actual experience of life do 
not find that the idea of a ‘‘ rational order of 
things’’ is confirmed. Life seems to them, 
in some of its aspects, a tangled skein; a mere 
jumble of unconnected events. In other aspects 
of it they say that it seems like a game ona 
chess-board where a man is overmatched by 
an invisible fate, who, as the shrewder player, 
allows one now and then to win, only to 
seduce him into final and fatal play. Life, at 
other times, seems to them a kind of lottery in 
which something strangely like chance rules 
the hour. Things seem at cross purposes. 
Events happen. Itis said that the inference 
of practical life is adverse to any other ration- 
ality than that of the institution originally of 
some very general order, which is every now 
and then upset by a strong human will or by 


19 


20 Divine Providence 


some still stronger but invisible influence, 
often acting wildly and without an end in 
view. 

Tet us admit as many of these disorderly 
facts as any man can enumerate. Let us 
allow all that can be claimed for them. We 
may set them down for the moment at their 
face value. We can afford to doit and still 
can assert most confidently that there is a 
rational order in the universe. For over 
against all these untoward events are a multi- 
tude that no man can number of just as evi- 
dent facts of which no account can be given if 
there is not a rational order in the world— 
facts of method, plan, purpose, and ultimate 
end. The main drift of modern scientific dis- 
covery is toward establishing the fa of law. 
We are getting a vast number of things out of 
chaos into cosmos; and we are going to do 
more of this in the centuries to come. Fas 
once discordant are getting to be accordant; 
once miscellaneous, are now marshalled under 
definite divisions according to the clear method 
and primal planof them. Events once verging 
on the miraculous are now ascribed, at least in 
the method of them, to law or plan. ‘The 
stars are no more, as once to us when children, 
scattered points of glory. They are not, as in 
the mad girl’s description of them, ‘‘only 
bright islands sown thick in the sky.’’ But 
each planet has its exact place, swings in its 


Is There a Rational Order in the World? 21 


appointed orbit, and keeps to its time without 
the variation of the fraction of a second. All 
is order where once all was disorder. The 
astronomer says, ‘‘God is a mathematician.’’ 
Even now, with science only in its infancy, the 
number of objects esteemed to be orderly are 
vastly more than those called disorderly. We 
can account to-day for a hundred marvels of a 
century ago. The longer the lists of these 
orderly things and of the laws they obey, the 
greater the opportunity for us to observe the 
heart and the hand of God as He makes use 
of them constantly to accomplish the provi- 
dential results He desires; they are the key- 
board and the stops of the organ, to be 
managed by the player who knows his instru- 
ment. For it can not be enough insisted upon 
that law is simply method observed and named ~ 
by us. It accounts for nothing. It is a des- 
cription of a process discovered by us. It is 
our classification of what we observe God 
usually to do. ‘The more of these orderly 
methods of procedure, the more proof not only 
of a God, but of the fact that He has plans in 
mind and ultimate results in view, and the 
larger to us appears to be the room for Him to 
ply His providences. Law is proof of men- 
tality. It is mind working by plan. It 
shows standard thought by which work is 
done and results are obtained. ‘‘’T‘he chariots 
of God are twenty thousand.’’ Unlimited 


22 Divine Providence 


resources used toward ultimate ends are proofs 
of rationality. The universe is full of pur- 
pose. Thought is pervasive. It is behind 
every fact. It is in every movement. We 
meet at every turn evidences of serious intent. 

And it will not in the least diminish this 
purposefulness if we admit that some things 
seem to be disorderly ; that some are appa- 
rently so to us, because of our ignorance of all 
the facts connected with them. ‘The stars 
nearest to the earth at one time went zigzag 
athwart the sky; and on the old Ptolemaic sys- 
tem there was disorder in the heavens. But, 
holding as we do to the Copernican system, 
with its center in the sun, that very zigzag 
motion to us is found to be the perfection of 
the curve of the unerring planets. Or, if we 
freely admit that there is not only apparent, 
but very real disorder, that is just what we 
should expect to a degree in a physical system 
made up to be conformed to the foreseen ca- 
lamity of sin. If man has not his ideal har- 
mony with his God, then why should not the 
world that is to environ him have also its occa- 
sional disharmony ? If nature, in some aspedts, 
is to reflect man’s obedience, then why may 
we not expect that some other aspects of the 
physical world would be used to reflec toa 
degree the sad consequences of disobedience ? 
There is evidence of smile and evidence of 
frown. ‘The traveler in Greece meets splendid 


Is There a Rational Order in the Whorld? 23 


architecture, but it is often architecture in 
ruins. Enough, however, remains to show 
the glory of the original plan and the superb 
execution. Here is a fallen capital; there a 
broken column. And plainly enough you can 
see the thought of the builders. This was a 
temple. Just there was the magnificent por- 
tico. Further on was the sacred fane for the 
abode of the god. Long ago the divinity 
went out. Long ago the altar fire was extin- 
guished. Long ago the Olympian Jupiter and 
his fellow-gods ceased to have a worshiper on 
earth. But amid all this devastation you can 
see the original glory. Soitishere. Nature 
is nature. God made it for the abode of the 
ideally perfect man. Sin came. ‘Then came 
disaster. But God had foreseen the disaster. 
The world should be a dwelling-place for man, 
tho now for the ideally sinful man. The 
traces of the old glory remain, tho many 
tokens of the disorder sin has wrought are 
evident. We must keep this twofold state of 
man, and, equally, this twofold state of nature, 
in our mind in judging of the rationality of the 
physical world. ‘‘If,’’ says Bushnell, ‘‘God’s 
whole plan respects the fact of sin before the 
fact, the scheme of nature was none the less 
Deniecty is 

Not that it is needful to show that in the 


* Bushnell’s Introduction to ‘‘ Nature and the Supernatural.” 


24 Divine Providence 


physical world, as far as we know it, the great 
preponderance of orderliness is to be found. 
Given but one instance of a rational order and 
the whole argument is gained. For this shows 
an ultimate mind, and mentality shown in one 
thing about a universe, all the parts of which 
are connected, mentality is really shown every- 
where. This ultimate mind, with its far-reaching 
activity and wisdom, puts its stamp more or 
less distinctively on the continuity of order. A 
single instance of intellectual order, clearly 
shown, then all the disorders of the world may 
be regarded only as permissive in the vast 
plan; the backward motion of the piston in 
the engine, seen alone, a hindrance, but in the 
whole assemblage of the parts, really helpful 
to the forward movement of the perfected 
mechanism. ‘The one instance of a rational 
order of things is absolutely unaccountable in 
an irrational world; that one instance admit- 
ted, the dark things may be regarded as dark 
to us only because of our lack of sufficiently 
broad and clarified vision. 

The doctrine of the Divine immanence is 
getting happy revival. Holding none the less 
to God’s separation in His selfhood from the 
world because He is over, we are coming to 
believe more fully that He is also zz all things. 
Not that all of God is anywhere manifested in 
physical things, but that no one of them is 
without God in it, and is what it is apart from 


Is Cbere a Rational Order in the Wlorid? 25 


Him. And, certainly, herein is scope for the 
working of His unslumbering Providence. 
The correspondence between the order of 
man’s thinking as.a reasonable being and that 
of the physical world about him, as shown by 
modern science, is a further confirmation that 
we are in a rational universe.* When I speak 
to. a brother man I assume that he has a de- 
gree, at least, of the same mentality as I have. 
He and I think by a common process of think- 
ing. ‘Thought-relations are common to think- 
ing minds. ‘There is more or less of orderli- 
ness in all thinking, and this orderly thinking 
is knowable. It can express itself in things to 
another interpreting mind. God’s thought of 
orderliness in the world meets our interpreta- 
tive thought. Minds are built to agree.t 
They are made to cognize and to recognize. 
One mind originates and another mind is made 
to understand, in some measure, at least, what 
that other mind has originated. God’s mind 
and man’s mind are mutually creative and in- 
terpretative. God’s demand for orderliness 


* ‘*The Creator desired all things to be as like Himself as 
possible.’’ Jowett’s ‘‘ Plato,” p. 613. 


+ ‘“The scheme of Cosmical order is the medium through 
which the Divine mind descends into expression and the human 
ascends into interpreting recognition.’’—Martineau, ‘‘ Nature 
and God,”’ vol. iii., p. 148. 

‘*A world exists about us made up on the very principles 
that we find in our own minds, 7. e., the ideas of space and 
time, substance and quality, cause and effect.”—Orr, ‘‘ Chris- 
tian View of God and the World.”’ 


26 Divine Providence 


in thinking, which He has expressed in the 
physical world, is recognizable by man. Plainly 
this world was made by a thinker and made to 
be thought about by some other thinker—man. 
Their thoughts meet in the things made and 
understood. Here is rationality expressed in 
physical objects, and there understood by 
rationality. Certain obelisks had stood for 
centuries on the Egyptian sands. ‘There were 
markings upon them. Plainly those marks 
were inscriptions, tho none could read them. 
At length a key to those markings was discoy- 
ered. ‘There was found to have been mind 
seeking to communicate something to mind 
through physical signs on physical things. 
There was a historic message to the world in 
those hieroglyphs. What if we think of the 
world as a vast monument written all over 
with the thoughts of God, and intended for 
man’s interpretation; God’s thought, to be 
met by man’s thought; the Divine mentality 
working itself out for our larger knowledge, 
Heaven’s message in physical forms for our 
moral instru¢tion—to show us, among other 
things, how near and interested He is in the 
world and in man His highest creature ; God 
solicitous for us and close to us in Providential 
care and teaching? ‘The rationalin the world 
is recognized in the light of the Infinite Ra- 
tionality. We live in no mindless universe. 
And all this is coming to be acknowledged 


fs There a Rational Order in the World? 27 


and even claimed in quarters which once were 
slow to recognize this class of conceptions. 
Within the last ten years scientific thought has 
undergone a great change. For tho it may 
be granted as some have claimed that science, 
strictly speaking, is legitimately concerned 
only with phenomena, yet since it has been 
wont heretofore to encroach on the domain of 
philosophy and utter itself strongly on what is 
beyond phenomena, we may note its new tone 
as it recognizes mental and spiritual methods 
and ends in the universe. ‘These better utter- 
ances may be summed up in the dictum of 
Lotze, viz.: ‘‘ Mechanism everywhere essential, 
but everywhere subordinate.’’ ‘The dynamics 
of the world are rapidly coming to be recog- 
nized as spiritual rather than material. Mind 
is recognized once more, even by scientific 
thought, as in the ascendent in the universe. 
It is felt that to the Infinite Mind, at least, the 
universe is absolutely rational in plan and in 
administration; and to us, as reasonable men, 
it is rapidly becoming more and more so; and 
the conviction is entertained that the only 
irrationality is due to our human limitation, 
and so is apparent and not real. And thus 
we are getting back from the aberration of our 
thinking, to the sounder conception of Bacon 
when he said, ‘‘I would rather believe all the 
fables of the Talmud and the Alcoran than that 
this universal form is without a Mind.”’ 


28 Divine Providence 


By yet another path we are led to the same 
result. One of the necessities of human 
thinking is the ‘‘belief in a cause.’’ ‘To 
question this innate belief is to try to show a 
cause why there is not a cause. ‘The belief 
that ‘“‘every event must have a cause”? is, in 
the world’s thought, what the belief in the 
multiplication table is in the business world. 
That table is not direétly to be proved. We 
assume it. We learn it. ‘Taking it for true, 
at first, we verify afterward. It is found to 
be correct in all the vast accounts of the wide 
world. It must be true. And so it is here. 
All the thinking of mankind, even when men 
do not recognize and formulate the law, rests 
upon it. Every glance of the eye, every 
bending of the ear to hear, is the inquiry for a 
cause. When the law is once stated, we take 
it as we take our multiplication table in child- 
hood. And we have acted on it, verified it, 
proved it by its results, to be true. It can not 
be otherwise. But what is cause? What 
originates anything? The answer is very 
simple. So far as we know, the only origin- 
ating force is wz//; nor can we conceive of any 
other cause. Will, as a force, may be con- 
sidered as existing in the animal will, in the 
human will, in the angelic will, in the Sa- 
tanic will, and in the Divine will. Will is the 
only power we know that starts anything. And 
the more wills, each left free, yet each also 


Is Ubere a Rational Order in the World? 29 


under the direct or indirect management of the 
Divine will, the larger is the Divine oppor- 
tunity disclosed in which to ply an unceasing 
Providence in the affairs of the world. So 
that the more wiils in God’s universe, the 
more the proofs of the One Great Will, 
the One Living Energy; like indeed to our 
wills in kind, but vastly greater in energy, 
and throbbing everywhere in His universe. 
Listen closely enough, listen with the unstopped 
ear, listen when the Babel of other noises is 
stilled, and you shall hear the Divine footfalls 
as God goes forth in the affairs of the world. 
Instead of asking whether there is any room 
for the admission of God’s Providence, we 
may ask if there is possibility of its exclusion. 


III 


IS THERE A MORAL ORDER 
OF THINGS? 


In addition to the logical or rational idea of 
‘the true and the false,’’ there is in us 
another conception, viz., the conception of 
‘“‘the right and the wrong.’’ In the one way 
of considering the thoughts and words and 
deeds of himself or of others, a man judges of 
them by mental standards; in the other way of 
apprehending them, he uses moral standards. 
Where does he get the standards by which he 
judges morally? Whence comes this law by 
which he attempts to distinguish things as 
morally different ?: 

Four answers have been given. 

It has been said to be the result of educa- 
tion. But while this answer owns the exist- 
ence of a moral sense, it by no means answers 
the ultimate question. It will in part answer 
the question as to the degree of the develop- 
ment or of the degradation of this moral sense. 
For, of course, like the logical faculty, the 
moral faculty can be trained rightly or 
wrongly. But this ability to train the mind 
and the soul presupposes something in us 
capable of being trained. Education describes 


30 


fs There a Moral Order of Things? 31 


a process, not a faculty; a method, not a capac- 
ity. Nor are we nearer an answer to the real 
question if we refer the existence of this moral 
nature in man to the training of successive 
generations in the long past. For we are 
asking now not for the history of a process, 
but for that which proceeds. To put the 
question back for generations is not to answer 
it. We want to know what that zs and whence 
it comes, which is capable, by whatsoever 
process, of being thus rightly or wrongly 
trained as it acts on moral questions. 

Another proposed method of accounting for 
our conception of right and wrong is that moral 
quality in conduct depends on the pleasure it 
gives to oneself or to others. Paley makes 
morality to be enlightened self-interest, with 
the sanctions of God and of the coming world 
resting upon it; others broaden the view by 
making moral conduct and our sense of it 
depend on the happiness it will bring to man- 
kind at large. There can, of course, be no 
doubt but that in the long run, taking in time 
and eternity, it is for our highest happiness to 
do right. Prudence and right-doing coincide. 
But because parallel they are notidentical. A 
man’s interest often seems to him to pull in one 
way and his sense of ‘‘ what is right’’ to draw 
in another. Is he to sit down and reason it 
out? Does he do so in the quick emergencies 
when he can not calmly estimate the loss or 


32 Divine Providence 


gain on either side and strike the balance? 
Indeed, we do sometimes praise the man who 
forgets all about his own happiness, and with 
no thought of any other man’s happiness or 
unhappiness, does his clear duty in a given 
case. This view of doing right because con- 
ducive to one’s own, or to the general happi- 
ness, reduces morality to the level of a 
computation of the gain or the loss. It is 
arithmetic. That true gain comes from 
morality, is of course conceded. But it is not 
the highest conceivable motive. Commendable 
as a secondary impulse, if ever it is made a 
primary one, it ceases to be a virtue at all. In 
moments of swift moral action it is out of 
view in the onrush of a deeper, higher, 
stronger motive. We find ourselves in a more 
strenuous mood of feeling. Mr. Mill, with all 
that admirable style and that plausible logic 
for which he is distinguished, spends whole 
chapters in defending the theory of ‘‘ greatest 
happiness’’ as the basis of morals, only, ina 
moment of great moral indignation, to yield his 
whole argument. Ina public utterance often 
quoted, he replied to Mansel, whom he evi- 
dently misunderstood, and whose words, as 
Mill apprehended them, stirred something 
deeper than his theory warrants. He asserts 
that if there be such an unjust and immoral 
God as he thinks Mansel believes in, no 
man should love and obey him; and he declares 


fs There a Moral Order of Chings? 33 


“if such a being can sentence me to hell for 
not calling him good, to hell I will go.”’ 
This is pure moral indignation at supposed 
injustice, with not a shadow of the “ greatest 
happiness ’’ idea about it. Indeed, in thiscase 
he proposes to act just contrary to his theory 
of morals in order to act rightly. He decides 
what he ought to do, not by his own defective 
logic, but by his own personal, inward, and 
imperative conviction of what is right. His 
moral intuition triumphs over his reasoning, 
works quicker and is surer. ‘The force within 
is stronger than his logic. ‘The fervor of his 
righteous feeling is right and so itis righteous- 
hess. It demolishes at one blow all his 
labored structure. His intensive sense of the 
right—simply as the 77¢//—asserts itself vigor- 
ously. 

Little need be said about the third of these 
theories, viz., that of ‘‘ greatest usefulness.’ 
Benevolence is a noble virtue. ‘The boast of the 
age is its ‘‘care for the other man.’’ But 
while we act in view of the relations we sus- 
tain toward God and our fellow-man, this con- 
sideration of ‘‘ greatest usefulness’’ is one of 
those which furnishes the facts before which 
another part of our nature rises up and acts as 
judge. And our question now is about what 
that 7s in us, which, sitting as on a judgment 
seat, takes the facts as given it by the senses, 
by the understanding, and all the array of our 


34 Divine Providence 


mental faculties, and actually pronounces a 
verdict upon these facts, singly and collect- 
ively. 

The fourth theory is that of ~zghteousness, 
viz., the soul’s detection by an inward law of 
a unique quality, the quality of right. ‘This 
sense of right and wrong is a simple percep- 
tion. It is the soul’s judgment by an inward 
standard. ‘The soul itself sees and decides 
that there is a peculiar moral quality in the 
thoughts, and feelings, and acts of men. As 
in the case of any other direct and simple 
feeling, there is no analysis possible. One can 
go no deeper. If, for instance, one knows the 
feeling described by the word ‘‘love,’’ no de- 
finition is needed ; if not, no definition can do 
any good. So, in the depths of our moral 
nature there is a profound feeling described by 
that word ‘‘right.’’ And every man knows 
what that feeling is. The interior law by 
which we make this judgment about the moral 
quality of things is a natural endowment. It 
is to the moral natureas it makes its decisions, 
just what the ‘‘sense of the true’’ is to the 
intelle@tual nature. When you tell me that 
a part of a straight line is shorter than the 
whole of it, something within me says, ‘‘ That 
is true.’’ Whatis that which so judges? It 
is ‘‘ the me within me.’? I am made up so as 
to see that a thing is ‘‘true or false,’ and I 
see clearly that this is one of the propositions 


Is There a Moral Order of Things? 385 


that is true. It may be that not the bodily 
senses, but the mind is addressed. I hear cer- 
tain statements. The same sense of ‘‘ the 
true’’ in me acts at once, and declares the 
presentation true or false. So, before some 
things presented to the soul, I can not help 
saying instantly those things are ‘‘right’’ or 
are “‘wrong.’’ It is an instinctive judgment, 
an inward law. I have a mental endowment 
that judges by one law and says a thing is, as 
I see it, “‘ true or false.’’ I have a moral en- 
dowment that judges by another law in me 
and says a thing, as I see it, is ‘“‘right or 
wrong.’’ I see a villain beating a child. Each 
stroke of his fist threatens the child’s life. 
Something within detests, abhors the man’s 
act. It judges by the moral standard. That 
act of that man ts wrong. I see a man honest 
and faithful under terrible provocations to be 
otherwise. I applaud him because he has done 
right. Y am myself judging by a law which 
is an endowment of my nature. ‘There is an 
innate sense of the right and the wrong. 

Is it objected that this makes the individual 
conscience infallible? By no means. For the 
moral verdict is always as is the evidence pre- 
sented. Any fault in the presentation of the 
evidence brings fault into the verdi@. Facts 
are presented by the senses. There is always 
a liability that some sense was not enough 
alert to act normally. ‘There may be other 


36 Divine Providence 


modifying facts unknown when we decide on 
the moral quality of a transaction. Facts, and 
mental judgments on them, are presented by 
the intellect to the conscience for its moral de- 
cision. Ifthe mind is warped by prejudice, if 
there is mental unfairness in presenting the 
evidence, the verdict will be affected. For the 
conscience will judge as it sees the facts. Error 
in the conclusions the mind draws from the 
facts and presents to the conscience, will affect 
the verdict rendered by the conscience. ‘The 
testimony may be false; the mind may sup- 
press unwelcome facts; there may be special 
pleading for a favorite object. The verdict 
will be right as before the facts presented. But 
another verdict might be given on a fuller or 
on a different presentation. 

Is it said, ‘‘If this is so, what is the use of 
the moral sense in us?’’ ‘The answer is that 
we use the reason tho aware of precisely the 
same danger of mistake on a question of ‘‘the 
true and the false.’’ Men keep on steadily in 
their mental action, seeking for the true, as 
they keep steadily on in their moral action 
seeking for theright. We might wish that we 
were both intellectually and morally infallible. 
But we are not to cast aside either reason or 
conscience because of the liability to err. We 
are going, the rather, to use both more 
carefully, with firm belief in an ultimate 
truth and right. There is one Being in whom 


Is There a Moral Order of Things? 37 


they both eternally gather and express them- 
selves. . 

If, then, in my own nature there is a moral 
judgment, there is in me a bit of the universe 
in which a moral order exists. And the same 
is true of each of the unnumbered millions of 
the human race. Hereis avast moral system, 
having in it all souls and their God. It must 
include all the moral relations in which men 
stand to a Creator and a Sovereign. ‘There is 
a kingdom of right. It is the one sovereign 
sway to which all the material and intellectual 
realms must do obeisance. It has as its regal 
word that word which, rext to the word 
God, is the greatest word—the word ‘‘ ought’? 
in our formula, ‘‘I ought to do this or that.’ 
All realms exist for this spiritual realm. For 
moral ends, just because they are such, are 
finalends. ‘‘The true’? is subject to ‘the 
right.’’ ‘These heavens are the outspread tent, 
this earth the broad theater on which come 
souls to do their moral work. ‘This spiritual 
world overlaps, embraces, and interpenetrates 
all else.** Moral action of God, and the souls 
He has made, gives worth to even material ob- 
jects. Man, by hisright use of them, can make 
them minister to him in his moral work. Thus, 
the physical, through touch of God and man, 
comes into the moral order. 


*“ The natural is for the sake of the moral,” See Kant, 
**Kritik,”’ p. 540, 


38 Divine Providence 


In view of all this moral action going on in 
human souls and in the Divine soul, and touch- 
ing every thing everywhere in the universe, 
the objections sometimes raised hardly seem 
worth naming; yet they are occasionally heard. 
It is asked whether all this idea of ‘‘ the right 
and the wrong ’’ is not a mere ‘‘impression,”’ 
amerely evanescent ‘‘feeling,’’ a prevalent ‘‘no- 
tion,’ taken up somewhere in human history 
and perpetuated ; a ‘‘mistaken conception,”’ 
that the race will leave behind in some future 
development. 

But if an “‘impression,’’ it is one of prodi- 
gious power and persistence ; and its influence 
has not lessened, but rather increased with the 
progress of the ages. ‘There never was a man 
who did not have this ‘‘ notion,’’ if ‘‘ notion ’’ 
it is, who did not experience this “‘ feeling? in 
some measure, if ‘‘feeling’’ it is, who did not 
come under this happy ‘‘ delusion,’’ if it be a 
delusion, viz., that some things are ‘‘ right.” 
Every human being, on every day of his life, 
sees and hears that on which he is instinctively 
sitting in judgment as to its right or its wrong 
character. Every man who has ever lived, the 
world around, and the ages through, has done 
this.* A coming man who should not do this 


* This is true, not only of nations regenerate in a measure, 
but of those called ‘‘ degenerates.”» Menzies says, these moral 
ideas are ‘‘ not the outgrowths of civilization.” “ There is no 
nation without religion.” ‘‘ The Bushmen of Australia, the An- 
daman Islanders must be considered as races fallen froma 


Is There a Moral Order of Things? 39 


would not belong to the race; for he would be 
separated by an immeasurable distance from 
all other men. A mindless race would be 
no human race, and a human race without 
moral ideas is unthinkable. If the pro- 
found innate conviction in the intellectual 
realm that there is ‘‘ the true and the false’’ 
is a ‘‘delusion,’’ then all human knowledge is 
baseless, all thinking the delirium of lunatics ; 
and if the conviction of ‘‘the right and the 
wrong’’ in all men is a fallacy, then weare all 
moral lunatics, and there is an end to allright 
thought, and feeling, and a&t. We are lower 
than the brutes, since animal instincts do not 
deceive nor moral questions annoy them. Bet- 
ter be sometimes misled by reasonings that are 
fallacious than never to reason at all. Better 
sometimes suffer through wrong-doing than not 
be high enough in grade of being to be able 
to do the right and the wrong. 

Yes. We are parts of God’s creation en- 
dowed with power of moral action. Right or 


higher civilization and present instances of degeneration.” 
“History of Religion,’ p.17.. And he quotes, as agreeing with 
him in this matter, Dr. Tylor, in his ‘‘ Primitive Culture,’ chap. 
' ii, So that ‘‘fetish worship,” claimed so earnestly a few years 
since as the ‘‘ primitive religion,” and Animism ‘‘the worship 
of spirits as gods,”’ neither of them can goso far back as to find 
a time when the moral faculties did not exist precisely asthe 
same faculties man possesses to-day; when the moral conviction 
that “something binds to do right”? was not an active prin- 
ciple inour human nature. Of course, the way of using those 
faculties was faulty. But the reality of their existence does not 
depend upon civilization, high or low, or upon the way of using 
them. 


40 Divine Providence 


wrong are the greatest of realities, and they 
will endure when all this material frame of 
things shall perish. We can confide in our 
senses as to the facts they furnish us; in these 
natural convictions of mind and soul as to the 
reality of truth and righteousness. ‘They are 
an essential and trustworthy part of our 
nature. They must also belong to the God 
who stands related in moral faculty to our- 
selves; He doing His work, as we ours, on 
the high plane of the reasonable and the right. 
There can be no higher plane of being than 
that which includes these. We have not an 
unreasonable nor an unmoral God at the head 
of things. Infinite intelle& without infinite 
conscience would be Satanic. Infinite intel- © 
lect attended and controlled by infinite con- 
science is altogether Divine. Intelle& can 
touch nothing that it does not ennoble. Things 
are not indeed persons, but persons may so 
use things that plan and order may appear. 
Things are not in themselves moral or immoral. 
But God and man are both doing their moral 
work on this earth of ours and amid these 
material things. A man’s controlling thought 
comes out on all occasions and stamps his 
work. Webster could not speak at a cattle 
fair without some word about the American 
Constitution. His thought was all runin that 
mold. His words had that pervasive idea. 
Shall not God’s work everywhere exhibit, in 


Is There a Moral Order of Chinas? 4} 


some degree at least, His controlling thought, 
His mindfulness, and His righteousness? The 
moral order may not always be noticed by us. 
Nay, it may seem sometimes that there is vast 
moral disorder. But what about our position 
as observers; and what about the vastness of 
His plans and the present incompleteness of 
their accomplishment, what of His great moral 
ends as requiring now a probation limited in 
period, as every probation must necessarily be, 
and followed by unending results? Give God 
time; give God eternity. The universe is not 
completed. Meanwhile there are facts show- 
ing a moral order. One instance of reason- 
ableness, one case of righteousness, is a dis- 
closure of the reasonableness and the righteous- 
ness of God. For all the rest we can wait. 
And by this reverent waiting we can acquire 
some virtues impossible in a universe where 
all could be at once understood. God’s moral 
order may take in some strange and dark 
facts. But reasonableness and righteousness 
are also, and most certainly, facts. And this 
is so clear that some will ask, ‘‘ Why all this 
reasoning on what is very near to a self-evi- 
dent proposition?’’ They urge that a man 
whose consciousness is that of a reasonable 
being ought to assume the existence of a 
rational order of things; and, equally, that a 
man whose consciousness is that of a moral 
being, ought also to assume the existence of a 


42 Divine Providence 


moral order everywhere in the universe of 
God. 

There is a law of conscience in us. It obli- 
gates. It reaches up to God and out to men. 
It matches a feeling in God. Asa moral God 
He must use all things morally in any just 
scheme of Providence. There is a singular 
moral correlation of physical things with 
moral ideas. Drummond’s ‘‘ Natural Law in 
the Spiritual World’’ may not be regarded as 
proving identity in the laws of the two realms. 
But if his objet was to show similarity, the 
work he undertook is not to be disparaged. 
There is a certain steadfastness and orderli- 
ness; a roundness and perfection sought in the 
seed coming up through flower, and coming 
round to seed again; sought in the star fulfill- 
ing its course. It is moral expression so far 
as the physical material allows. Our best 
thinkers are finding not only ‘‘the thread of 
a continuous purpose’’ in the world, but that 
this purpose has to be moral in order to be 
intellectual. And there must ever be a ten- 
dency to use physical things as far as possible 
in the expression of this moral purpose. 

Prof. John Fiske, in his ‘‘ Through Nature 
to God,’’ approaches this unity of the intel- 
lectual with the moral, from another side. 
He says, ‘‘ So far as our knowledge of nature 
goes, the whole momentum of it carries us 
ouward to the conclusion that the unseen 


flg There a Moral Order of Things? 43 


world as the objective term in a relation of 
fundamental importance that has coexisted 
with the whole career of mankind, has a real 
existence; and it is but following all the 
analogy to regard that Unseen World as the 
theater where the ethical process is destined to 
reach its full consummation.’’ * 

In this old world of ours as newly con- 
ceived in the best thought of our best think- 
ers, there is surely all possible opportunity 
for the manifestation of a Divine Providence. 
Mrs. Browning says: 


‘Without the spiritual, observe, 
The natural is impossible.” 


The reasonable is the unreasonable apart 
from something further—the moral and spiri- 
tual. An intellectual order that is immoral or 
even non-moral, would be the highest un- 
wisdom. 

And this moral wisdom expresses itself in 


* Dr. Orr in his ‘‘Christian View of God and the World,” 
notes three forms of approaching the study of what Germans 
call ‘‘the world-system ;”’ the scientific, in which the stand- 
point is the objective world, and the end the discovery of law— 
the above quotation from John Fiske will illustrate this method; 
the philosophical, which is the exact opposite in its method, 
starting from the thinking self—the earlier chapters of 
“ Social Theology,’’ by Pres. Hyde, of Bowdoin College, will 
illustrate this method: and third, the religiows, which starts 
from the practical relation that man sustains to God and re- 
fers all back to Him. But why should we regard any one of 
these methods as exclusive of the others? Why not all of 
them seen as separate and yet harmonious approaches to a 
study of the intellectual and moral order of the world? 


44 Divine Providence 


the prophetic conscience put in us as men. 
Conscience not only detects and judges, not 
only declares the “‘ ought,’ but it predicts also; 
and this prediction is made on the basis that 
we are in a moral universe as well as in an in- 
tellectual. It says that joy will come from 
right-doing, and pain from wrong-doing. No 
conviction in human souls is more sure than 
this or more universal, and yet no innate con- 
viction is more severely tried. For men are 
often disappointed in it, because they expect 
certain results, which are not always possible 
until probation has been more extended or has 
even closed; because they have looked for ex- 
ternal reward or penalty, whereas the main 
thing is the spiritual results of right or wrong 
doing, and these desired physical results can 
be of use to men only as connected with moral 
results; because they look for these conse- 
quences of moral action on too narrow a field 
and in certain specific matters which it may 
not be God’s plan to give them ; because they 
forget that life extends over into the next 
world, and that both external and spiritual re- 
ward or penalty belong there as well as here. 
But no number of disappointments in these 
matters eradicates the idea from men’s souls. 
They are convinced that the wrong-doer is 
going to meet the wrong deed somewhere some 
time, and reap what he has sown. Virtue is 
going to get, sooner or later, its reward. God 


fs Cbere a Moral Order of Things? 45 


has it in mind. Men, too, have it in mind. 
He will not disappoint the moral conviction 
placed in their souls—a transcript of that in 
His own nature. God exists to see that it is 
done, and men exist to see the fulfillment of 
moral order in God’s universe. Providences 
will come out right in the end. They come 
out according to our moral expectation often 
enough now to show the trend of things, and 
the results are deferred often enough to make 
us sure of another state where the vindication 
of just moral results will be made complete 
before all men. 


IV 


IS THERE A PROVIDENCE IN 
INDIVIDUAL LIFE? 


It is an objection to religion as old as the 
oldest infidelity that man is a being altogether 
too insignificant for the Divine notice. It is 
asked : Shall we believe that the great God, 
Maker of the heavens and the earth, with the 
vast concerns of an illimitable universe on His 
hands, will turn from these affairs to notice a 
being like man, here in a mere corner of His 
dominions? Can it be true, as religious men 
assert, that this great God gave an ‘‘ Only Be- 
gotten Son’’ for beings whole millions of whom 
‘are but as the small dust of the balance be- 
fore Him?’’ Can it be that He has a special 
Providence over every one of these millions— 
a Providence extending to the smallest deeds 
done, and thoughts cherished, and purposes 
formed ? 

All of us have heard these objections. All 
have felt, at times, their force; even tho in 
stronger moments we may have been able to 
throw them off and to triumph in the truth of 
the Divine noticeand care. ‘There were hours 
when Shakespere could write no line, and Mil- 
ton thought himself no poet ; hours when a 

46 


Providence in TMndividual wife 47 


Christian gets shut into some dungeon of 
Doubting Castle, and can not at once find the 
key of Faith. 

A man has had a vivid dream. He wakes, 
and asks, at first, which world is the real one, 
that of last night or that of thismorning. The 
dream was so very vivid that he dreamed he 
was not dreaming, and he is haunted, and dis- 
tressed, and dispirited by the ghostly things 
of the midnight vision. He reaches out his 
hand and touches chair or table—these are 
real. He looks up into the sky—that sun is 
real. The delusion, the deceit, the ghostly 
figures have to be fought down. ‘The man, at 
length, can look the evil apparitions squarely 
in the face, and then in the broad daylight of 
reality they depart, and the depression is gone. 

We must treat these ghosts of unbelief in the 


a 


same way. We must put them down by means 
of the facts we know about God, and His Prov- ‘ 


idence, and His Word. ‘The trouble comes 


oo 


from matching man’s bodily littleness and * 


feebleness with the vastnesses of the physical 
universe about him. It was before the aspe& 
of the broad heavens above him that a Psalm- 
ist cried out, in words, sometimes interpreted 
as words of despair, that man was unworthy of 
the Divine notice. ‘The singer in the Psalm 
had been a shepherd on the Judean hills. 
There, so pure is the atmosphere, that the 
stars seem to be not set far up in the sky, but 


48 Divine Providence 


to be poised on nothing, and the distance be- 
yond them up to the real heaven of the firma- 
mental blue, appears vastly further than that 
from the earth to them. It is night—‘‘ night 
clear and fair, with all its starsin large array.”’ 
The moon rides forth in its glory. ‘Troops 
upon troops of stars, far more than our eyes 
ever see, are visible as the shepherd lies on the 
earth among his flock and looks heavenward. 
He is seized upon with a sense of wonder. He 
is overpowered by the sublimity of those mid- 
night skies. If these are so great, what of 
the God who made them—made them so easily 
in their multitudinous host that they are not 
even the work of His mighty arm, but only of 
the fingers of His hand? ‘There leaps forth 
from his heart the involuntary strains of a 
sacred song; afterward, it may be, elaborated 
and finished as now we have it in the 8th 
Psalm: ‘‘ When I consider Thy heavens, the 
work of Thy fingers, the moon and stars, 
which ‘Thou hast ordained, what is man that 
Thou art mindfulof him?’’ Whohas not felt 
it! Who has not had the overpowering sense 
of all this vastness! Who has not cried out, 
almost in despair, before the remembrance of 
the littleness, the nothingness of man ! 

And yet it is the comparison of the great- 
ness of the universe with the littleness of 
man’s body, with his physical insignificance, 
that so oppresses the soul and raises doubt as 


Providence tn Mndividual Life 49 


to the Divine notice and Providence in human 
affairs. Yes; as compared with the vastness 
of God’s works we are ‘less than nothing and 
vanity.’’ Our life, compared with the things 
about us, is transient, and ‘‘there is none 
abiding.’’ We “‘ fail before the moth.’’ ‘The 
very mountains at the foot of which man 
builds his cities, are called, by comparison 
with our human life, ‘‘ the everlasting moun- 
tains.’’ 

But is this the real comparison for us? 
Littleness on the one hand and greatness of 
physical bulk on the other, are not the things 
to be compared. These physical objects, ‘this 
moon and stars,’’ know not anything. I,a 
man, stand up, look upon them, and by virtue 
of knowing them when they can not know me, 
and by virtue of thinking of them when they 
can not think of me, I am lifted to an im- 
measurable height above all of them. I can 
even think, as they can not, of the God who 
made them. I can act, as they can not, on 
the plane of ‘‘the true and the false,’’ and of 
“the right and the wrong’’—the plane on 
which God thinks, and judges, and ads. I 
am so far superior to them, when counting in 
my rational and moral nature, that any com- 
parison with them is out of the question. 

Man is in a sense the “‘ lord over all’’ these 
things. He weighs these stars of the night; 
he throws the lines of his gigantic boundary 


50 Divine Providence 


across from sun to sun. He subjects all he 
sees to the dominion of hisown thought. He 
makes himself master, by taking them into 
his notice and his care, of all this visible uni- 
verse about him. Our skeptics tell us that 
man is but the mote imprisoned in the crystal 
of the ice; nature binding him fast in imperi- 
ous law. What do they mean? If they 
mean that he is not a god, that is granted. 
But he has the power of the supernatural will. 
He starts a motion. He originates a force in 
this will, which force is above nature, and 
thus he subjects nature, in manifold instances, 
to himself. Nature has her mountains; but 
man scales them sometimes, and sometimes 
tunnels them in his superiority. Nature has 
her broad forests; but man takes them and 
shapes them into dwellings of comfort or of 
beauty. Nature has her oceans; but man 
crosses them with ease as if a highway, and 
turns the very sea that would engulf him into a 
minister not only of safety, but of comfort, and 
even of delight, as he rides a victor on its 
waves. Man seizes on nature’s most destruc- 
tive agents, and her storms he thwarts, and her 
lightnings he harnesses. He makes her 
seas vocal with his unceasing messages. He 
uses her sun, and moon, and stars in measur- 
ing the earth, his dwelling-place. The meteors 
of the heavens he numbers; and he knows the 
hour when the most lawless visitants of the 


Providence in indivioual Lite 51 


evening skies will return on their fiery path 
about the sun. He chases the shadow of the 
moon athwart all the planets of the system, and 
calculates to a fraction of a second the time of 
the beginning, and progress, and ending of 
each eclipse. Next to the wonder of travers- 
ing the ocean guided by the magnetic tread 
toward a pole of the earth which no man ever 
set foot or even eye upon, is the wonder by 
which he maps out the heavens that bend 
themselves like a benignant providence over 
pnewearth iy: <<" Thou | madest whim to have 
dominion over the works of Thy hands ; Thou 
hast put all things under his feet.”’ 

If the words of the Hebrew singer should 
be taken as a question, and we ask why God 
thus notices man, there would be at least one 
answer sufficient to silence all the objetions 
of unbelief. It is this: God is pleased thus to 
notice man. He is free so to do. He can 
make one bit of matter to be a stone, and 
another bit of matter to belong to a human 
body. It would be answer enough to say that 
with all possibilities before Him, He simply 
chooses to bestow this noticeon man. ‘‘Shall 
the thing formed say to its maker, ‘ Why hast 
thou made me thus?’’’ Surely God must 
have the same power to be free in His eleGtions 
as we men claim for ourselves. Not that God 
is ever unreasonable to Himself, but He does 
not always give His reasons to us. He has 


52 Divine Providence 


been pleased to choose man as the special ob- 
ject of His notice and care; of His providen- 
tial and gracious regard. Could no other 
reason be given, this alone would suffice to 
silence all objection. 

But He may have designed to reveal Him- 
self in some special line of His perfections by 
this providential and gracious notice. ‘The 
world reveals His hand, the creation of man 
His mind as He makes man ‘‘in his image’’ 
intellectually; but the heart in God may crave 
man, as the stun craves a world to shine upon. 
Granted the condescension is great that plans 
the redemption of each man and accentuates 
that redemption by constantly recurring prov- 
idences. But then it was to be almighty con- 
descension—condescension worthy of a God. 
And if this wonderful condescending notice is 
unto further and even a redeeming act, thus 
bringing a salvation to man, the sinner, then 
man’s littleness is lifted, by this whole pro- 
cedure, into greatness; his solitariness is 
changed into the loftiness of a personal factor 
in God’s chosen plan of redemption. His life 
is no more ‘‘an island of a single grain of 
sand,’’ but he is islanded by the whole flow- 
ing ocean of God’s perpetual presence in 
Providence and in grace. In this point of 
view, standing as he does connected with these 
imimensities, the humblest man is worth the 
Divine notice and care. He is necessarily 


Providence in Tndividual Life 53 


enwrapped in the whole Providence of his 
God. 

And this is further seen if we consider man 
—each man in his separate selfhood—as re- 
lated to God’s great moral government. ‘The 
perfection of any government, human or 
Divine, is found in its just dealing with every 
man, whether high or low. No man can be 
too insignificant for its protection in right 
doing and its detection and penalty in wrong 
doing. Let the most inconspicuous person in 
the community commit a crime. In the tenth 
of a second this most insignificant person pulls 
the trigger of a pistol the tenth of an inch, 
and sends the fatal bullet into the brain of a 
fellow man. Instantly, officers commissioned 
by the state are stirred to aGtion. The man 
hides. But telephone and telegraph are busy. 
If he has fled, every town and city in the 
vicinity is informed of the circumstances of 
the affair, and set on watch for the man’s 
detection. The next morning thousands of 
men at their breakfast tables read of the 
tragedy; read also, that the criminal is in hid- 
ing. ‘They read the careful description of the 
man, of his height, color, and dress. Within 
twenty-four hours ten millions of the citizens 
of the land know the name of the criminal, 
whereas the day before not a thousand people 
knew that such a man existed. If on the sea- 
board where steamers start for foreign ports, 


54. Divine Providence 


and there is a possibility that the man may 
have sailed on some one of them, the ocean 
telegraph is used, and the people of two con- 
tinents know of the faés. And so this insig- 
nificant person of two days ago has acquired 
such notoriety, that his name is known not 
only from Atlantic to Pacific, but across the 
ocean. And all this is because of the relation 
he sustains to the law of the land which he 
has broken. Let us suppose him arrested at 
length. The news of this fresh fact about him 
flies far and wide. He is brought up for 
trial. Judges, holding highest commission, 
sit upon the bench. Lawyers plead before 
an empaneled jury. The proceedings of the 
trial are carefully reported. And now, every 
man who reads of the case and scans the 
charge of the judge and the verdi& of the 
jury, is interested that there shall be exa& 
justice done, without fear or favor. For 
every man’s own safety is imperilled by any 
injustice toward the state or toward the man. 
And all this is because of the man’s relation 
to the human government under which we 
all live. 

And in the case of a sinner against the 
greatest of all governments, that of a holy 
God—this same principle must hold. Be the 
man as insignificant in himself as any one can 
deem him, he is related to the most perfect of 
governments, and through his transgression, 


Providence tn Tndividual Life 55 


to the greatest of all laws. God can not over- 
look, ignore, condone the wrong without 
becoming himself involved in criminality. 
There the man stands, requiring the notice of 
his God. 

If, on the other hand, our man who, outside 
of moral law, was comparatively insignificant, 
does a right act, then all the might of the 
Divine government is on his side. He is to be 
under the shield of the unslumbering Provi- 
dence of the Heavenly Father. Men may ~ 
harm him, they acting on their lower plane of 
human freedom. But that is only permissive; 
and it becomes one of the things that ‘‘ work 
together for good to them that love God.” 
‘‘And who is he that shall harm you if ye be 
followers of that which is good?’’ Such a 
man is taken up, not only into God’s Provi- 
dence for protection, but into God’s plan for 
accomplishing His infinite and eternal purpose. 
His apparent littleness disappears in the 
Divine largeness. 

And we must not forget the original endow- 
ments of man. ‘The study of his faculties 
makes more emphatic the primal story in 
Genesis. He was made ‘‘in the image of 
God.’ Andin the song of the Hebrew singer, 
itis said of him that he is ‘‘ made but little lower 
than God.’’* Both science and philosophy 
tend toward this acknowledgment. ‘‘ Man, 


* Ps, iii: 8. Revised version. 


56 Divine Providence 


says Kant, ‘‘is the last end of nature.”’ 
‘‘Man crowns the edifice,’’ says Tyndall. 
‘“The head and culminating point,’’ says 
Wallace. ‘‘’The doctrine of evolution,’ says 
Fiske, ‘‘ by exhibiting the development of the 
highest spiritual qualities . . . replaces man 
in his old position of headship in the universe, 
even as in the days of Dante and ‘Thomas 
Aquinas.’? ‘‘Man is the terminal fact; the 
world was made for man.’’* But the full 
Christian view goes further back, runs deeper 
and rises higher. It claims that both the 
world and the man were not only made 
by God but for God. Dante and Aquinas 
hold to the headship of man over nature 
because they hold both as subject to God. 
Man is, in Genesis, product of the earth 
on one side of his being, and product on 
the other side of the Holy Spirit. ‘‘ That 
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that 
which is born of the Spirit is spirit,’’ is as true 
in the Old asin the New Testament; as true 
of man’s origination as it is of his regenera- 
tion. ‘The inbreathed ‘‘soul’’ in Genesis is, 
in man, the seat of a double life; the ani- 
mating principle of his bodily life, and also 
the animating principle of a self-conscious 
mental and moral life. ‘The Old Testament 
usage contrasts, not the soul and the body, 
but the contrast is between the peculiar life 
* “‘Tdea of God,”’ p. 20. 


Providence in Tndividual Lite 57 


man has and the kind given to all other living 
beings. The New ‘Testament approaches 
nearer our ordinary distinction of body and 
soul. But there is still a remnant of the 
Hebrew usage in which ‘‘ //e’’ is the emphatic 
thing; as when Jesus says, ‘‘He that hateth 
his dife (¥#x”) in this world shall keep it 
tine em eternal.’7) When) this’. spin twit 
man,’’ z. ¢., that part of his ‘‘ life’’ capable of 
receiving the most blessed of all gifts, is 
especially wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, 
then the man becomes, in the Scriptural sense, 
‘* spiritual.’’ Here, in this capacity for the 
reception of this Holy Spirit, comes into view 
something of the true dignity and worth of a 
man. 

But very close in Genesis, and in science as 
well, is the body to the soul. ‘They have no 
substance or faculty in common; for they are 
parallel, and therefore not identical. Body 
acts on soul, soul on body. Never in the 
Scriptures, never in true science, is the body 
disparaged. The unfortunate translation ‘‘ our 
vile body’’ is now seldom quoted, and the 
words of the Revised version are usually and 
fitly substituted therefor: ‘‘the body of our 
humiliation.’’ It is even said that our body, 
because of the indwelling of the soul in it, is 
also the ‘‘ temple of the Holy Ghost.’? And 
so the human body, in its wants, is in under 
the dome of a Divine Providence, since it is 


58 Divine Providence 


impossible to have any complete care for the 
soul that is not also a Divine care, because of 
their connection, for the body as well. And 
so there are those who contend, not alone be- 
cause man’s soul is so great and his power of 
originating a change through will is so unde- 
niable, but because the body is thus connected 
with the self-originating power of the soul, 
that man is actually a supernatural cause act- 
ing in the world of nature as well as in the 
world of mind.* 

And then what broad distances are spanned 
by a man’s two-fold nature of body and soul ! 
They are joined not by the addition of the one 
to the other, but by such a union of the two 
that a unique person exists, with relations to 
the dust in one direction and to the skies in 
the other. He touches the widest extremes, 
and harmonizes the greatest contrasts. On 
one side of him he is ‘‘ of the earth, earthy,’’ 
on the other side, with capacity for being a 
‘son of God.’ And thus he is brought into 
connection with all that is lowest and all that 
is highest. Surely a being so widely related is 
worthy of providential care and is of use to 
God in His providential plan. Over and in 
and by and through such a being as man, God 
can work out His purposes; and this is Provi- 
dence. 

Perhaps the two greatest evidences of the 


* See Bushnell’s ‘‘ Nature and the Supernatural.” 


Providence in Mnodivioual Dife 59 


grandeur of man—of each man—are these: 1. 
that he has not only certain powers, but certain 
inpinite convicizons ; 2. that his nature is so 
great that Jesus Christ could enter it. 

By ‘‘infinite convictions ’’ is meant, first of 
all, that he has, among others, the conviction 
that he is fzzte; for a man could not know 
that he was finite if he could not, at least in 
thought, transcend hisown finiteness and form 
some kind of an idea of theinfinite.* Weare 
always trying to get out of our limitation, as we 
should not do, if there were not some convic- 
tion about an infinity beyond us. So that one 
of God’s great attributes is always casting itself 
as a shadow—say, rather, as an effulgence— 
across our consciousness. Of course, we are 
not omniscient. But what is that apprehen- 
sion of the idea that ail knowledge is related 
to all other knowledge? And what does it 
mean that the aspiration to know is one that 
is boundless? And what means this out- 
reach and ongoing of the soul in man toward 
the great attributes of the Infinite God in 
whose ‘‘image’’ man was'made? We spurn 
barriers and leap out beyond space and time, 
in our thought. Wedo not comprehend, but 


* At first sight it seems extravagant and self-contradictory to 
speak of man’s nature as containing an ‘‘infinite element.” 
But there is in us, as spiritual beings, that which rises above 
the limits of time and space, and this is the reproduction or re- 
fleftion of God’s own eternal consciousness and life.—Caird, 
‘* Fundamental Ideas of Christianity,” p. 179. 


60 Divine Providence 


we do apprehend, at once, the finiteness of our- 
selves and the infiniteness of God. We can 
look about us and see that we have boundless 
relations to man, above us and see that we have 
boundless relations to God, and within us and 
become conscious that we have a moral life 
that for its completion must, as Carlyle says, 
‘““take hold of the eternities.’’ 

This power of summoning ourselves to ap- 
pear before ourselves—we call it self-conscious- 
ness—gives us another of these convictions. 
There hovers over us always an zn/finite ideal 
to which all the thoughts and purposes we find 
in the contents of our consciousness ought to 
conform themselves. It isa strange thing this 
power to be both subject and object; this con- 
sciousness by which we transport ourselves out 
of ourselves so as to see ourselves, we doing 
the seeing and also the person seen; we judging 
and we being judged! Hence the conviction 
of our sin ; hence our unrest as those who have 
failed of attaining ; hence self-condemnation. 
If we were merely; finite creatures none of this 
would be possible. Weshould be content with 
our finiteness, as the beasts are. Weare capa- 
ble of identifying ourselves with infinite inter- 
ests, of attaching ourselves, in our fortunes, 
for time and eternity, to the interests of our 
God. And the ideal of all right and all at- 
tainment lifts itself higher and higher as we go 
on. ‘The ideal progresses as we make progress. 


Providence in Mnodividual Lite 61 


And all this shows the capacity of a man asa 
being ‘‘ made in the image of God,’’ and who 
is ever to be advancing in the direction of God. 
Such a being would seem to be worth the care 
of a Divine Providence. 

Further: capacity for moral action in man 
is capacity for his immortality. For therecan 
never come in moral action a time when a ‘‘ to- 
morrow’’ will not be needed in which to expe- 
rience the results of each ‘‘ to-day.’’ Morality 
is thus immortality. A being who does one 
right thing or does one wrong thing, starts in 
an infinitely progressive immortality of action 
and of result. Oneinstance of moral action in 
this moral universe destroys materialism and 
proves individual immortality. Moral action 
works in the sphere of illimitable relations. 
There is acertain boundlessnessin it. Noth- 
ing short of the infinitude beyond is large 
enough sphere for the existence of sucha being 
as man “‘ made in the image of God.’’ 

Let us not restrict that grand phrase the 
‘“image of God’’ to the earlier Eden hours. 
The new intelleftual and moral faculties in 
themselves were glorious, tho as yet undevel- 
oped. Only further on and higher up in the 
infinity can it be understood what that great 
phrase shall mean. It certainly means this 
much—zext to God, so that next to the concep- 
tion of God Himself, in our minds, is to be 
that of man, seen as approximating to his God 


62 Divine Providence 


in all the coming eternity. Perfectly made in 
faculty at the outset in the earthly Eden, who 
shall describe that perfect development possible 
only in the heavenly Eden ? 

This profound conviction of a power to 
apprehend: that which is so far above us, 
has one more form of expression. We can go 
out of ourselves in exercising our faith in our 
God. We can not indeed comprehend His 
mercy and grace in His Gospel. But we can 
‘“lay hold of eternal life.’’ Wecan so far enter 
into the greatest of Divine conceptions as to be 
profoundly moved thereby. We can take 
what we can not make; receive what we can 
not ourselves prove; accept, on God’s testi- 
mony, what is infinitely beyond us and what 
we could never make our own in any other 
way. Our capacity for faith in the declara- 
tions of an Infinite God, is our grand dis- 
tinction asmen. ‘Thespiritual principle makes 
man capable of being a son of the Infinite God, 
and a sharer in His infinitely glorious heaven. 
Is not such a being worthy of the Divine Provi- 
dence that ‘‘ neither slumbers nor sleeps ?”’ 

And when we add the other of the above 
named proofs, viz., that the nature of man is 
so great that the Only Begotten Son of God 
could enter into zt, the demonstration is com- 
plete. The consummation is reached in one 
person. The ideal becomes the actual in 
Jesus Christ. 


Providence in Mndividual Lite 63 


It is plain, then, that great as any one can 
make the difficulties of a Divine Providence 
over and in man’s life, there would be more 
difficulty in holding to no Providence at all in 
the case of a being so ennobled originally at 
creation, and now again even more ennobled by 
the entrance into his race of our Lord Jesus 
Christ himself. And the samehistoric Lord, 
‘‘the Christ,’’ is now promised to each man as 
the “‘ Lord the Spirit.’’ If He enters into the 
life of a man by His pervasive presence, then it 
is not strange that God who ‘‘ knows the mind 
of the Spirit,’’ should hear that man’s prayer 
when he asks especial providential guidance 
and blessing. It is not strange that God, the 
Father, should answer this cry of His child. 
Whether He does this by an arrangement in the 
original constitution of His universe, or in some 
other way provides for providential aid to this 
praying man, we need not decide. Enough 
that God is not imprisoned by any natural 
law, seeing He is author and worker of what 
we call the “‘laws of nature’’; author and 
worker also of those laws, higher and broader 
and more lasting than those of nature—the 
“laws of mind and soul.’? There must be 
place for a free God to work out His plans, 
whether by law or over law, if the needs 
of His child and the needs of His own heart 
shall require it. Speaking of God’s per- 
sonality and freedom of will, Prof. Seth has 


64. Divine Providence 


said, ‘‘God must be infinitely more—we are 
certain that He can not be less than we know 
ourselves to be.’’ 

And the argument drawn from the moral 
experience of devout men in regard to provi- 
dential care in their own case, is of great 
moment. Ifthe Holy Spirit influences human 
souls, then in their religious experience we 
have human nature in its best and clearest 
consciousness on such questions. Religion as 
a theory may do for our speculative hours. 
But religion as a personal experience goes 
down into our emotional nature. It moves 
the soul at a center where any movement is 
felt in all our being. Its home is the affec- 
tions. And there it is that devout men find 
the response to God as the God of Providence. 
Their testimony is of great worth at this point. 
If the flower could know and speak, it would 
testify to the sun. Its colors are just somuch 
concentrated sunshine. Its growth testifies 
to the vivifying power of the sunbeams. 
Providence can be studied in the experience 
of devout souls. ‘They recall ‘‘the way the 
Lord led them.’’ Sometimes the path was 
dark, but God ‘‘brought them out into a 
wealthy place.’’ ‘The thick-leaved volumes of 
Christian biography give us a vast mass of 
testimony that ‘‘all things work together for 
good to them that love God.’’ When some 
of these devout men began to watch God’s 


Providence in Mndividual Life 65 


providential dealings with them, they put un- 
due emphasis on merely external things. Their 
unripe piety looked for outward and physical 
manifestations mainly. But they came to see” 
that even outward calamity had inward bless- 
ing. And tho outward good is not beneath 
God’s providential ordering, yet the hours of 
pain ‘‘ may yield a good that prosperous days 
refuse.’’ Greatest losses sometimes are great- 
est gains. ‘‘ No sorrow for the present seem- 
eth joyous but grievous; nevertheless, after- 
ward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of right- 
eousness unto them that are exercised there- 
by.’? And so they have gained a position 
where their horizon is wider. Soothed in 
times of calamity by the way in which God 
has previously turned outward reverses into 
spiritual successes, they are ready with open 
eyes to see all the kindly providences of their 
outward lot. 

And the study of this mood of mind in 
which a man sings | 


““Good when He gives, supremely good; 
Nor less when He denies,”’ 


is a fruitful study for the Christian psycholo- 
gist. Here are facts of which notice should 
be taken and account be made. Here is not 
Eastern fatalism, but its exad opposite—a 
profound faith in the Everliving God of 
Providence. Here is personal confidence in a 


66 Divine Providence 


personal guidance and care that is warranted 
by Divine promise and proved by experimental 
fat. ‘The devout soul is thusa mirror giving 
back the reflection of the providential interest 
that exists evermore in the heart of God; and 
we mmay study either, and we may mark the 
correspondence of the one to the other. Life 
is anything but little and lonely when the 
Divine Being is no longer to a man a mere 
intellectual apprehension, because God has be- 
come to the soul an experience, in His Provi- 
dence and His grace. And the world is 
another world when the devout man, his eye 
made vital, looks out upon it and sees it 
crowded with the providences of God. The 
experience of the great gladness that comes to 
a man when he believes that God rules over 
all things, is very real. Chaosis gone. Cos- 
mos takes its place in the soul and in the 
universe of God. 


V 


IS THE RACE-BOND A PROVIDEN- 
TIAL BLESSING ? 


THE race is one race, exactly as each in- 
dividual of it is one man. ‘There is a man- 
kind. The ‘“‘solidarity of the race,’’ as this 
oneness of it is frequently called, is more 
than the mere number of separate men. It 
includes the relations they bear to each other. 
These units of personality are connected not as 
are the particles in a stone, by cohesion. We 
are not separately created Adams. ‘Thereisan 
organism through fatherhood, motherhood, 
and childhood. Hach member of the race 
comes into it by birth. And therefore it is 
that each man is a blood relative and an intel- 
lectual relative and a moral relative of every 
other man. In this peculiarity of men, as a 
distinct race, lies the possibility of an inherit- 
ance, good or bad, from an ancestry.* Strong 
objections have been made to this arrangement 
because it seems to limit alike the freedom of 
the individual man and the individual God. 
We ought not, say some, to be handicapped 


* “Man is a bundle of inherited tendencies, and will, in 
turn, transmit his nature, with its new marks of good or evil, 
to those who come after him,”’—Orr, ‘‘Christian View of the 
World.” 


67 


68 Divine Providence 


by any such inheritance. We ought, they 
say, to have been started as separate persons. 
So, too, if each man is ‘‘ the mote imprisoned 
in the crystal,’’ how can the mote be free and 
how God be free to have the mote otherwise 
than it is, by any providential care? But it 
may turn out that, by closer study of the fa& 
of a race-bond, we shall find larger room for 
the play of this Divine Providence. Special 
opportunity, by combination, by direction of 
forces, by working them now in unison and 
now in antagonism, is clearly furnished to the 
Divine worker. ‘The player can draw out the 
more stops, can touch more notes on his organ, 
and send forth more fully his wonderful har- 
monies at will. 

It is, of course, true that we suffer vast 
miseries through this race-bond. We are 
born with a cry and die with a groan, and in 
no intermediate period are we exempt from 
inherited sorrows. In every human body are 
the seeds of physical depravity. In every 
human mind, inherited weaknesses and imper- 
fections. Sometimes the sad inheritance of 
guilty ancestors seems to overleap the imme- 
diate generations and fall at length to the lot 
of some single child. Even nations are natu- 
ral inheritors. Heredity of evil and environ- 
ment of wrong are the curse of vast heathen 
populations. Their life starts in an atmos- 
phere physically and morally foul, and devel- 


Race=$Bond a Providential Blessing 69 


ops amid falsehood and cruelty. How little 
chance for these unnumbered millions, inherit- 
ing as they dothe superstition and degradation 
of remote centuries, encased in prejudices and 
crushed under the horny hand of institutions 
that are altogether base alike in their origin 
and administration. ‘The great poems of the 
Orient, and the great philosophies of Egypt 
and India have in them a terrible fatalism, be- 
fore whose merciless swirl all things and all 
men are swept onward toward an indescrib- 
able abyss. The hopelessness of heathendom is 
parallel with its sinfulness. And its sinfulness 
is largely derivative. For the men so unfor- 
tunately situated are not mere sponges taking 
in the evil as from without. It seems to be 
‘“born and bred in their very bones.’’ Let us be 
as charitable as we can; but facts are facts. 
Nor must any belief in some just degree of the 
Divine abatement of responsibility in the case 
of these millions hinder us from owning the 
terrible disadvantages under which, for no fault 
of their own, they are born, and live, and die. - 
We are amazed sometimes at a plan whereby | 
so many are handicapped at the start, and are 
obliged to continue their lives under such mis- 
fortunes—misfortunes due, in a very large de- 
gree, to their membership in our human race. 

At home, on our Christian shores, the ar- 
rangement of a race-bond has its peculiar per- 
plexities. See men born in families where the 


70 Divine Providence 


darkness seems the more dense because of the 
Christian brightness that shines only a few 
blocks away in the city of their habitation. 
Think of the ‘‘ submerged tenth,’”’ so many of 
whom resist all efforts to lift them to the sur- 
face. Think of the men and women badly 
born and worse reared—cases, too, many of 
them, where the guilt of parents stamps itself 
on the face of the child. Think of children 
trained to theft in the slums and punished at 
night if they have not stolen enough during 
the day. 

And where there is no crime, remember to 
how many of the world’s poor life isa struggle 
for mere existence. ‘There is lack, not only of 
the pleasures, but of the necessities of life. 
There are thousands who have all they can do 
‘‘to keep the wolf from the door.’’ It is con- 
stant fear of lack of shelter, and food, and fire. 
There are incessant anxieties in health, and 
bitter sorrow and hardship in sickness. Even 
in circles that do not know the pinchings of 
want, here and there, despite of education, and 
culture, and position, a boy or a girl may go 
utterly astray, and this evidently because of a 
virus that, skipping the immediate generations, 
breaks out in some disgraceful deed, filling a 
household with consternation and shame. 
Think of children in the best families evidently 
born with taint of scrofula or consumption. 
An inherited weakness of some part of the 


Race=fond a Providential Blessing 71 


system brings a constant anguish and an early 
death. ‘There are those who, solely because of 
some family defect, rescue life from the jaws 
of death only by constant effort, with no time 
or strength to give to other lives. Think of 
mental peculiarities, a source of constant anx- 
iety to friends and a torment to the man him- 
self. ‘Think of moral delinquencies bred clearly 
in the deepest nature and bursting sometimes 
all the barriers of morality and religion. 

A vast amount of this trouble comes through 
connection with the human race, and the ar- 
rangement whereby such things are entailed 
often upon those not themselves direAtly guilty, 
but only connected with the guilty, seems to 
some persons to be a severe reflection on Provi- 
dence rather than a wise or just plan for 
mankind. 

But some things are to be carefully noted. 

It is clear that there is less suffering than if 
men had been started as separate Adams. ‘The 
only two conceivable theories for men are, 
either men as a race, or else men as a vast 
number of unconnected, but similar, individu- 
als. On the latter plan, God would have 
chosen for man a totally different condition of 
things from that seen in all other forms of 
living creatures. They are propagated and 
not separately created. But suppose, for a 
moment, God had chosen for man a method so 
diverse from all His other workings; a method 


72 Divine Providence 


to which the whole physical environment is not 
conformed. Let us suppose that we start as 
full-grown men. We should each have Adam’s 
curiosity in the primal garden, and we should 
certainly try the right and wrong for ourselves. 
We should start in selfishness with no parental 
care, no opportunity to make choices in little 
things before we could set our hands to those 
more important; we should be without practise 
in physical, mental, or moral living, and we 
should ruin ourselves at the outset in a fall as 
bad asthat of Adam. Those first coming upon 
the earth would clearly set upon us later com- 
ers and combine so as to keep, as against us, 
what they had before we came, and we should 
be obliged to resist them, as well as to organ- 
ize, in turn, against all new men thrust in 
upon us. Cliques, parties, combinations, 
which could have no bonds other than those of 
selfishness, would be formed, and nowhere 
would any animosity be softened by ties 
of nature. Wars would be incessant, and 
all ameliorations of them coming from fam- 
ily or racial considerations would be wanting. 
The least humanitarianism would be impos- 
sible, for we should not be a human race, but 
only similar individuals. The destruction, 
in this utter selfishness, would be so terrible 
that only by some Divine overflow of creative 
power, could the supply of new beings be kept 
up. And in addition to wars, great pestilences 


Race=Bond a Providential Blessing 73 


would rage uncontrolled where domestic provi- 
sion for suitable care and precaution could not 
exist. The world, bad enough now under the 
plan of human generation, would be worse, 
and there hardly be need of the threat of future 
wo, for the world of perdition would have be- 
gun for men now and here. So thatall things 
considered, if there must be a choice between 
the two, the race arrangement is far the better. 
Disease and suffering may be incidental to this 
plan; but the plan itself may be wise and kind, 
even tho the incidents of sorrow were all fore- 
seen by Him who made it. 

Further: this ‘“ solidarity of the race’? gives 
good men the better chance for benefiting their 
fellow men. True, we receive harm, but on 
the other hand we can give help. If the 
wicked Cain puts his brand on the brow of his 
descendants, the godly Seth can put his holy 
stamp on his posterity. This thing gives per- 
sonal opportunity. Good has its power to 
make others better greatly increased. ‘There 
can be progress through connected genera- 
tions. Character can be massed. ‘I‘here are 
those who hope that as a child coming up 
through all the best things in the race- 
bond, may arrive at a nobility otherwise 
impossible, so this vast humanity of which we 
are all a part, may be lifted from its sin by 
continual accessions of good men to the side 
of righteousness. However that may be, this 


74. Divine Providence 


is sure, that the race relationship, when rightly 
understood and used, gives each individual 
more power for doing men good than could be 
furnished in a world filled with separately 
created Adams. 

Nor is the welfare of the individual the only 
thing. By the race-bond, the family becomes 
a factor for human welfare. 

When God gave Eve to the waiting Adam 
amid the bowers of sinless Eden, then and 
there was constituted the first family. And 
ever since His special blessing has rested on 
this, His own institution. When God gave 
His Son, our Second Adam, that marvelous 
career in Palestine had as its earliest recorded 
miracle the turning of the water into the wine 
at the marriage in Cana; thus hallowing for- 
ever the family life of the world. ‘The race- 
bond alone might have produced a race, if the 
race or even the individual were all that was 
to be desired. The needed number of chil- 
dren could have been born outside the family. 
Promiscuous herding of men and women, 
animal fashion, would have given some sort 
of a race, but not the family. ‘The man is for 
the woman, the woman for the man. And the 
newest sociological fact is also the oldest, viz., 
‘““These twain are one.’’ In nature unity is 
possible only in duality. Those who regard 
all possible progress of man as simply his ris- 
ing above the coarse animalism of his original 


Race=BHond a Providential Blessing 75 


existence, ‘‘the throwing off the brute inherit- 
ance so that the ape and tiger should dis- 
appear,’’* will have to account for the fact 
that men, as far back as we can go, had the 
noble instinct of the family. ‘The original 
wedlock gave the pure original household. 
And this family feeling is not the fruit of 
culture nor the result of progress from coarser 
animal experiences, since it is not a whit 
stronger to-day than when ‘‘the youthful 
world’s gray fathers’’ entered on this family 
relation. It did not emerge from an advanc- 
ing civilization. ‘The primitive marriage was 
the purest the world ever saw. When sin 
came—sin that left the trail of the serpent 
over the fair flowers of Eden—it left this 
one fairest blossom of wedded life almost un- 
touched. In story and in song, the love of 
the one man for the one woman has been the 
perpetual theme. The song without some 
touch of it is no song. ‘The novel has no 
place apart from it, and history has no fairer 
scroll than that which records the loves of 
home and household among a people. Of 
God’s three great institutions, the family, the 
state, and the church, the family is the oldest; 
and with it He has connected in closest bonds 
some of His most far-reaching plans for the 
elevation and salvation of the race. 

God’s selection of the Abrahamic family as 


* Prof. John Fisk’s paraphrase of Tennyson’s line. 


76 Divine Providence 


the one through whom all nations should be 
blessed, was one of the great features in His vast 
scheme. But to-day He selects from many a 
family His chosen instruments. He will pre- 
pare a man for peculiar usefulness. And He 
begins back two or three generations. <A 
father or mother, their ancestors also, have 
some sterling quality of conscience, some grand 
element of the intellectual life, have achieved 
high character, have some tender impulse of 
the moral life. And God mingles these quali- 
ties, modifies this infelicity, promotes that 
excellence, rouses what needs quickening, 
infuses new nobleness, gives opportunity for 
highest discipline in all morality and righteous- 
ness, until a child is born who inherits these 
best things of high moral ancestry, and who 
has also that most blessed of all inheritances, 
a great store of unanswered prayers waiting 
for his birth. He may be born obscurely. 
But God finds him. He may not know at 
first his mission; there may be failure in his 
earlier work. Affli¢tions may press salt tears 
from his eyes. It may take time and trial 
before he yields himself fully to God’s serv- 
ice; then, at length, ancestry, training, en- 
vironment, the discipline of sorrow and the 
loss of all things but his trust in God, may 
be seen as so many conspiring providences 
fitting the man for his work in life. ‘Trait 
after trait of his ancestral inheritance will 


Race=LBond a Providential Blessing 77 


appear. And the man and his work will come 
together. This is why there is such interest 
in tracing the family line of men whom God 
has conspicuously used. Back in the family 
history will be found the separate traits that 
at length have made such a man possible. 
And yet further: we are to recall the fad 
that our hope of salvation lies in an event 
made possible only by the race-bond. Jesus 
Christ entered into it by birth, becoming not 
only one with us, but oneofus. Relief of soul 
is as providential a thing as relief of body; 
the spiritual provision is as really providential, 
in the broad sense of that term, as is the 
physical. So that over against the sad facts 
of human heredity, is to be placed among 
other things the glad fact of a Gospel which 
spreads its radiance over all our time and our 
eternity. God has provided through the race- 
bond that a second Adam shall start a new 
heredity. Sin was not man’s original outfit. 
It is not essential to man. It is not a neces- 
sity of his being. It can be eliminated. There 
is also a better thing made possible through 
Christ’s advent than the mere salvation from 
the power of sin. Entering our race our Lord 
lifts up ‘‘every man who cometh into the 
world” toa height of dignity and advantage 
unattainable aside from this act of His. ‘The 
“eternal life’’ promised in the golden text is 
our entering into a new and vital relation to 


78 Divine Providence 


Him who thus comes into oneness with us; 
He is the ‘‘ Eternal Life’’ in whom stands 
our eternal life. Manis thus in moral posi- 
tion on a plane far higher than that of Eden. 
Newly related to God by God’s choice of Him 
to fill a new position, ‘‘it doth not appear 
what he shall be.’’ The race-bond is his largest 
possibility, his greatest hope and blessing. 
Brought down, man has been by it; but, in 
the provision of God, by it he becomes the 
most exalted of beings.* Was man debased 
by it? Hear Browning sing: 
‘‘Ah! man is deified thereby 
For compensation.” 


The race-bond helps more than it hinders 
for all who will use it rightly in obedience to 
the Christ who entered it for the good of man- 
kind. Fully surveyed the arrangement has 
more of blessing than of blot. The advan- 
tages of it exceed all its disadvantages. It 
opens the one way—the one way so far as we 
can see—whereby a Christ coming into the 
race can lift us from the low level of our sin 
to the height of His own glory. ‘The race- 
bond, designed in infinite wisdom, has been 
used by infinite love for the introduction of 
infinite goodness in the person of Jesus Christ 
into our humanity. He is evermore one of 
our human race. 


* “A little lower than God.’’ Ps. viii: 5. Revised version. 


VI 


IS THERE A PROVIDENCE IN 
NATIONAL HISTORY ? 


Nations have their distinctive traits as well 
as individuals. Some of these traits are in- 
herited from a long line of ancestral nations. 
Some of these traits might almost be called in- 
digenous to the soil on which a people dwell; 
some of them are due to the airs they breathe, 
the zone they occupy, the elevation or depres- 
sion of their dwelling-place. Some are due 
to centuries of education and culture, or, on 
the other hand, to vast periods of ignorance 
and degradation; due, also, not unfrequently, 
to some man of great genius for legislation or 
for war, who puts an ineffaceable stamp upon a 
whole people. 

If a man can thus stamp a nation, what shall 
be said of the stamp that the great God can 
place upon it in His providential dealing? 
Shall God have less to do with human history 
than a Cesar, a Napoleon, or a Washington? 

It is certainly a kindly Providence that na- 
tions, as nations, should exist. Dugald Stew- 
art, enumerating what he calls ‘‘the active 
powers of man,’’ names not only love of posses- 
sion and love of fame, but ‘‘love of country.’’ 


79 


80 Divine Providence 


Certain it is that no historian can omit to no- 
tice the part played by patriotism in the devel- 
opment of the human race. Of course, in 
God’s plan of a national life, as in any plan of 
any kind of life, there is the necessary friction. 
Differences of tendency and development, with 
the result of clashing nationalities, are unavoid- 
able, man being what he is and in such a world 
as ours. These things have brought wars 
hitherto, but they hold in themselves certain 
elements that presently will fulfil the original 
intention of God in providing for national life. 
God’s ideal is perfect. There is ‘‘ a kingdom’ 
of Heaven.’’ 

We are able to trace a great law of providen- 
tial working, whereby two directly opposite 
tendencies are so employed as to further an 
evident purpose. Plainly there isa destructive 
element, a development downward as well as 
upward. All advancement has been by the 
thrusting in of a higher civilization; and where 
there has been no such civilization to enter the 
mass, the nations invariably have died down to 
their roots. And yet every small gain to hu- 
manity, even in a nation doomed because, on 
the whole, its work deserved its doom, has 
somehow been preserved in the nations that 
have taken its place in the advancing line. So 
that there is a science of history, and its laws 
can be depended upon as surely as the laws of 
chemistry. Only it takes sometimes half-a- 


— Providence in ational History 81 


dozen generations to see the working of the law 
as it brings penalty or reward. The past of 
humanity is not a disorderly mass of fortui- 
tous occurrences, but an orderly series of 
events that have had manifest in them the free 
personality of God, and equally the free per- 
sonality of man. For the God, the nation, the 
man are each independent factors. But their 
very independence is a law to be reckoned with 
and relied upon. In the ages to come, as in 
the ages gone, what with the laws of heredity 
and environment, and the play of free being, 
alike Divine and human, God’s Providence, as 
it has had, so it will have, free course and be 
glorified. The plan, evidently, is that each 
nation shall contribute its quota to ‘“‘ some far- 
off Divine event.’’ 

Some men who hesitate to admit a Divine 
Providence in individual life, acknowledge the 
Divine hand in the more prominent events of 
national history. When, at Grant’s victory at 
Appomattox, some newspaper placed on its bul- 
letin-board as a parody on the Doxology the 
words, ‘‘ Praise Grant, from whom all blessin gs 
flow,’’ the crowd instantly demanded a change 
which the proprietor dared not refuse, and 
men stood before the board and sang the Dox- 
ology with tearful eyes looking heavenward. 
God may be expected to emphasize some events, 
and men in noblest hours may be expected to ° 
respond in their recognition of God’s emphasis, 


82 Divine Providence 


We need not hold that there is more of Provi- 
dence in such events, but only that more stress 
is laid upon them. Is not this the key to the 
Old Testament record of the national life of 
Israel? It was the popular belief of all men 
in that age’that the God of a nation was the 
arbiter of its destiny. He gave success when 
pleased, sent calamity when offended. Victory 
in war was His smile, defeat His frown. He 
gave or withheld at will its harvests. Blessing 
or blasting was from Him, in the national life. 
But the God of the Hebrew, tho He had a 
‘“chosen people,’’ was no local divinity. He 
was the ‘‘ Lord God of the whole earth.’’ Jew 
and Gentile were alike under God’s moral law. 
Hehad not only written it on tables of stone, but 
on the more indestructible table of the human 
soul. Recognized or unrecognized, He was God 
of all men. Hecould use the Gentile nations, 
tho they were themselves under His frown, in 
such a way as to scourge His Israel for their 
national sins. ‘The Old Testament is written 
from this one point of view—God’s dealing 
with a people in their national life. The pri- 
mary inspiration is that of the facts; the 
secondary is that of the record. ‘Then comes 
the inspiration of prophetic interpretation; 
then the Gospel interpretation and fulfilment, 
as God provides His Son as the Teacher, Re- 
deemer, and Savior of men. It is all provi- 
dential, as well as gracious. ‘The Old Testa- 


Providence fi National history §8 


ment is written, not from the surface, but 
from the soul of things. It is a Divine idea. 
Not that there was a particle more or less of 
Providence in Jerusalem than in Babylon, in 
Palestine than in Assyria. But it was Provi- 
dence in Hebrew history, with an emphasis 
upon it, and Providence working for a definite 
end—so working, indeed, as to be the obje&- 
lesson for all the future centuries; working in 
Palestine, ‘‘the land”’ fronting three conti- 
nents, the envy of all of them for its situation 
—an envy resulting in continuous warfare for 
its conquest; working where everything done 
was conspicuous to the whole ancient world, 
which, by and by, should give all its moral 
treasures to the wider modern world. It was 
a special Providence of world-wide carefulness 
that selected the Hebrew nation with an ances- 
try so alert in moral ideas, and gave that peo- 
ple a position where they influenced, morally, 
all the old civilizations; and then ordained, in 
the ripe hour, that great Roman conquest by 
which, for an age, the world was made one for 
the spread of the Gospel of Grace and Right- 
eousness. It was not a matter of more Provi- 
dence, but of more emphasis by God, and it 
was intended to be noted, studied, and empha- 
sized by us. It hadmore of moral worth, spir- 
itual import and special serviceableness to 
mankind. God had no more to do with peace 
and war, no more to do with the pestilence and 


84 Divine Providence 


the drought, with the bountiful or the scanty 
harvest in Palestine than He has in America 
to-day. Only He had to do with those things 
differently; was giving them a peculiar moral 
significance; was making them especially con- 
spicuous, and so was suiting them to the ex- 
pectations of those times. And the Old Testa- 
ment is written from this Divine point of view, 
as our modern history is not. God had, in 
former ages, His inspired prophets to interpret 
the events. 

To-day we are to use our instructed and de- 
veloped reason in drawing the modern infer- 
ence from modern facts. We have, indeed, 
the liability, as those prophets had not, to 
error, through our lack of carefulness and our 
narrowness of horizon. But the handwriting of 
God is conspicuous, and men of thoughtful 
mind and devout heart, who have alsothe gift 
of the ‘‘vital eye,’’ may look alike on ancient 
and modern historic events, and behold the 
finger of God. Sometimes we must have the 
sweep of long centuries to see what God means. 
The providential arrangement by which the 
Hebrews must flee from Egypt, brings them 
into their own land—theirs, because the land 
of their ancient religion. The tribal confed- 
eracy at length becomes a united nation under 
Saul, and David, andSolomon. ‘Then follows 
the divided nation. Both sections are carried 
into captivity. But while God punishes their 


Providence in Wational History 85 


sins, He secures the recovery of the more an- 
cient faith in the nations among whom they 
are captives. Then comes the singular resto- 
ration, in which heathen rulers, ating from 
motives of state policy, do yet exactly fulfil 
God’s promise and accomplish His will. The 
subsequent dominion of Greek thought and of 
Roman law, the supremacy of one world-wide 
empire, facilitating the spread of the new Gos- 
pel—these are providential movements for the 
welfare of mankind and the glory of God. 
They are so plain that ‘‘he may run that 
readeth it.’’ Then came the offer of the Gos- 
pel to Asia Minor, its partial reception and its 
final refusal; and the opportunity passes over 
to Macedonia. ‘The Asian continent, east of 
Palestine, also declines, and Africa has the 
offer. Along its shores are some of the fore- 
most churches; but the continent south of the 
coast shuts out the light and becomes known 
in history therefor as the ‘‘ Dark Continent.’’ 
Africa’s opportunity is offered to Europe. 
Northern Europe accepts, but southern Europe 
receives only to pervert the Gospel, and the 
light crosses the ocean to our own America. 
Let it be noted that rejections work into the plan 
as certainly as receptions. ‘‘ My house shall 
be filled.’ In America an early period of deep 
religious feeling and of earnest Christian effort 
is followed by the prevalence of French ency- 
clopedic thought and of English deism. ‘Then 


86 Divine Providence 


the great heart in men rebelled, and such won- 
derful reaction occurred as makes the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century memorable in 
the religious history of mankind. Never before 
such mighty moral enterprises; the conversion 
of the world seriously undertaken, and provi- 
dences matching providences, until we stand 
amazed at what God is doing among the na- 
tions of the earth. 

Occasionally, in a single decade and on a 
narrower scale, we can see national provi- 
dences. Especially in recent centuries can we 
mark God’s answer to the prayer of oppressed 
peoples. God is always thrusting some great 
reform before a nation. ‘The nation has to 
elect which side it will take. In the modern 
centuries feudalism had to be destroyed. God 
used the only instrument which, as all men 
now admit, was adequate to the task; that 
instrument was war. Take the page of French 
history usually called ‘‘the Hundred Years 
War.’’ In 1340, Edward III. of England, off 
the coast of Sluys completely annihilated the 
French fleet, greatly to his own surprise and 
that of all the onlooking nations. ‘The French 
lost 28,000 men while the English loss was 
trifling. But the singular thing was the ter- 
rible slaughter of admirals, and captains, and 
men from the rank of nobility. Michelet 
says, ‘‘ The moral result of such a destruction 
of nobles was not less fatal for France than 


Providence in Wattonal history 87 


Trafalgar.’’ Then came Crécy, in which the 
slain Frenchmen were nearly as many as the 
whole English army. Here again the 
slaughter was terrible, for 30,000 men were 
slain. But the most remarkable thing was the 
proportion of the nobles who fell. ‘They had 
said that “‘common men ought not to be left 
to defend France. Her nobles should be 
entrusted with her honor.’’ Not for centuries 
such a display of banners, and of armor, of gor- 
geous trappings and holiday millinery. But 
1,300 of the foremost nobility of France per- 
ished that day. Sluys on the sea was more 
than equalled by Crécy on the land, in this 
respect. Henri Martin calls Crécy ‘‘ the grave 
of chivalry’’ and ‘‘ the immense event in the 
history of the Middle Ages.’’ In God’s 
Providence the oppressors of the people were 
overthrown; and equally providential was the 
fact that the victory was not due to the ability 
of the English leaders, who suffered almost in 
the proportion of the French nobility, but to 
the plain English soldiery; the men armed 
with bows, and some say with flails and dag- 
gers. It was aristocracy overthrown by com- 
monalty. Inthe next great battle, 2,500 of 
the.French nobles were left dead on the field 
and 2,000 taken prisoners. The French out- 
numbered, six to one, the English, who were 
not prepared for victory, much less for such a 
victory, gained once more by those who had 


88 Divine Providence 


been called ‘‘the greasy bowmen of England,”’ 
over the flower of the French nation. Napoleon, 
afterward, was reported to have said that 
‘‘God’s Providence goes with the stronger 
battalions.’’ But Napoleon’s dittum was not 
true at Poictiers. God was with the weaker 
battalions. In His Providence things were 
exactly reversed. He had ‘‘seen the sorrow 
and heard the cry of the humble.’’ Feudalism 
was getting toward its end in the only possible 
way, by the destruction of the oppressors. 
Next, in 1415, came the death blow. A little 
army of 12,000 common soldiers, poorly 
equipped—bowmen again—met the remaining 
‘‘gentlemen of France.’’ Here, too, out of 
10,000 killed, 8,000 were titled persons. ‘‘ It 
was a very piteous thing to see all this zodlesse 
hacked to death,’’ says the old chronicler. 
But here again the people triumphed over rul- 
ers—the people ‘‘armed with the instruments 
of labor and the chase.’’ Even Henry ‘‘as 
he went over the field said, ‘We have not made 
this slaughter, but Almighty God for the 
sins of France.’’’ But the last stroke of 
Nemesis was to be dealt by the hand of a mere 
girl. Think what you will of Joan, Maid of 
Orleans. Call her fanatic, call her lunatic 
even, if you will. One thing is clear, she was 
the instrument God used to give ‘‘the finish- 
ing stroke’’ to chivalry in France. Feudal- 
ism perished; and a new system, in which 


Providence in ational history 89 


man is man, giving labor for wage, the poor- 
est as free as the richest, took the place of the 
oppression of the Middle Ages in that land. 
But the providential dealing had not ended. 
God punished French oppression by Edward 
III. and his descendants. And then came 
the punishment of the wicked punishers. Of 
EHdward’s family, five sons reached manhood. 
Then the Nemesis began to overtake them and 
their posterity. The record of their descend- 
ants is about the saddest page in English his- 
tory. After the name of the man we read the 
words ‘‘beheaded,’’ ‘‘ perished in the Tower,’’ 
‘“‘murdered,’’ ‘‘strangled,’’ ‘‘imprisoned for 
life,’’ ‘‘died on the scaffold,’ ‘‘slain and 
trampled in battle,’’ ‘‘ put to death for witch- 
craft,’’ ‘‘shot in his fortress,’’ etc., etc. 
Branch after branch became extind, until the 
last descendant of the last line in one branch 
“was found working as a cobbler.’ * 

But Providence in those stirring centuries 
was not alone punitive. Nor was it alone dis- 
ciplinary. It was shown that if the wrong 
was hated the right was prospered. Five 
great names, harbingers of a new time, 
are the providential product of this period. 
Dante, and Chaucer, and Froissart, and 


* See an article in Contemporary Review, October, 1899, by 
Richard Heath, entitled, ‘‘ But is God Silent?” in which the his- 
tory of this family is traced down through the following cen- 
tury. For many of the above facts Iam indebted to Mr. Heath. 


90 Divine Providence 


Wyclif appear. Dante’s immortal ‘‘ Com- 
media’’ would have been suppressed for its 
daring, as it placed some of the popes not in 
the purgatory from which by purification they 
could gain heaven, but in the infernal prison- 
house whence no soul ever escapes, save that 
his wonderful genius and his appeal for free- 
dom at Florence, were too dear to Italian 
patriotism to permit papal punishment. Dante, 
all unconsciously, opened the way for Luther. 
So, too, the ‘‘Canterbury Tales’’ prepared 
men for the better day. And Froissart took 
history out from under the legends of the 
monks and their pupils in the convents, and 
made it a genuine record of actual facts 
for the study of the world. And there was 
also the parallel fact that God in His kindly 
Providence gave us Wyclif and the English 
Bible. 

The story has often been told of the singular 
destruction of the Spanish Armada, in 1588, 
by stuiccessive tempests. Bent upon the anni- 
hilation of English liberty and of the Prot- 
estant religion, it approached the shores of 
England. Viewed in one way, there was 
‘fone long series of misfortunes.’’ ‘The orig- 
inal commanders died before the expedition 
could leave Spain. Scarcely had the new and 
inexperienced leader set sail, when a terrific 
storm so injured his fleet that he put back for 
repairs. On hearing of this the English fleet 


Providence in ational history 91 


was divided, part remaining at home and part 
sailing to finish the destruction of the Spanish 
ships, begun by the tempest. But the English ° 
admiral, learning of the refitting of the enemy, 
hastened back to his own shores just in time 
to fall upon some of the straggling vessels of 
the Armada. ‘Then come further disasters 
to the invaders. New tempests rise. Strange 
fright, like that of the Midianites before 
Joshua’s remnant, seizes the Spanish captains. 
There follows the most disorderly and uncalled- 
for rout in all naval history. New storm and 
stress are on the sea; while the very stars in 
their courses seem to fight against these 
doomed ships, and many of them are driven 
as wrecks on the Scottish and Irish coast. 
And the cause of liberty and religion was 
saved. Now, if there ever should be a Provi- 
dence in human affairs, is not this the oppor- 
tunity for its exercise? Let a man have the 
narrowest views of the place and play of provi- 
dential arrangement and working and accom- 
plishment, he certainly can find in the assem- 
blage of these events, in the timing of them, in 
the adjustment of item to item, the manifesta- 
tion of a more than mortal agency. ‘There 
was more than disaster and misfortune for 
Spain; there was more than ‘‘happy acci- 
dent’’ for England. ‘There was the finger of 
God. ‘True, certain devout men in immedi- 
ately succeeding years refused to recognize 


92 Divine Providence 


any secondary causes. ‘The destruction of the 
Armada was the ‘‘stock instance’? in English 
history of Divine Providence. And this led 
Macaulay to use his half-veiled sarcasm at 
those who ‘‘saw a miraculous or at least a 
semi-miraculous intervention’’ in events that 
he acknowledges secured the salvation of his 
own country. It is safe to hold that were he 
writing to-day, when that reaction against 
extreme views has spent itself, he would write 
in a very different vein. ‘The newer view in 
both philosophy and religion puts not less em- 
phasis on the transcendence, but more on the 
immanence of God. It is the view which sees 
Him always and in all human affairs, and can 
also see that He sometimes puts especial 
emphasis on an event for the manifestation of 
His own glory and for the teaching of mankind. 
He can ‘“‘make bare his arm.’? He notches 
the calendar of the centuries. He is in and 
over all His works. But sometimes He speaks 
in providences with startling distinctness. 
Take the instance of the Armada. In the vast 
number of conspiring circumstances, each in- 
significant alone and yet each having a place 
in the whole assembling of the event; in the 
adjustment of each thing to serve its exact 
mission; in the combination of law with law 
and man with man, all working toward the 
result; in the precise timing of each thing 
done; in the fitting of each part to every other 


Providence in ational history 93 


part, as of cog to cog in some most intricate 
piece of mechanism—in it all we can see a 
steady and definite progress, with no inter- 
vening break as of a hair’s-breadth, toward a 
foredoomed providential end. Surely it was a 
fit thing that Englishmen by one common im- 
pulse should crowd their churches and give 
thanks to God. But for what give thanks, 
except for God’s Providence in such a national 
salvation? Andif Englishmen then only obeyed 
a great instinct of the human soul in so doing, 
we should disobey alike the same noble in- 
stinct and also our owm intelle@ual and moral 
conviction, if we could study such events and 
fail to recognize that all-comprehending and 
yet that especial Providence of God that pre- 
sides over the affairs of mankind. 

A hundred years go by. There is again 
danger to liberty and religion. William, of 
Orange, sets sail for England. In this in- 
stance, too, there is storm and tempest, and 
his fleet was frightfully damaged. He puts 
back, collects the remnant of his ships, repairs 
thoroughly the damage, adds new vessels to 
his squadron, and attempts the second time to 
reach the shores of England. Four days of 
favoring breezes bring his fleet to Torbay. 
The winds slept on the waves during the land- 
ing of his forces. But one hour after the dis- 
embarkation, a furious storm from the west 
drove back the pursuing ships of King James, 


94. Divine Providence 


and the success of Orange was secured. ‘The 
history of England, and, through England, of 
Europe, was changed for centuries by the 
winds of heaven, now prosperous as his ships 
advanced, now quieted as Orange landed, and, 
in an hour, furious as they drove before them 
the hostile fleet. What shall we say about 
these things? Can we rest in any idea of 
accident, or fate, or impersonal law? Had 
God nothing to do with events on which the 
gates of empire turned? 

It issomewhat curious to note the comments 
of the chief actors at the time. James, at the 
early reverse of Orange, declared that God’s 
providential hand had done it in answer to 
the prayers of his Catholic subjects; but when 
his own reverses came, he ascribed them to 
‘‘the elements.’’ But Orange, on the con- 
trary, credited ‘‘the elements’’ with his early 
disaster, and ascribed to the Providence of 
God his final success. In these respects their 
majesties have had too many followers who 
could see God’s hand only when physical 
events came about according to their wishes. 
But as in prayer, soin Providence. In prayer 
God answers as really when He says ‘‘no’’ as 
when He says ‘“‘ yes’’ to the petitioner. And 
in Providence His hand is to be recognized in 
temporary defeat as well as in final success. 
He brings about alike the penalty of wrong- 
doing and the reward of righteousness. And 


Providence in ational History 95 


His great moral ends are sometimes best 
secured by physical calamity and defeat, until 
a nation, humbled and instructed, is ready 
to do His will. Catholic and Protestant 
princes in the time of William, should have 
recognized not only the usual ‘‘laws of the 
elements,’’ but the Providence of God work- 
ing in and over and by ‘‘the elements.’? We 
can now see that, as in our American war, the 
defeat at Bull Run was a genuine providence, 
so in the case of William’s invasion of Eng- 
land, the early disaster was the best possible 
preparation for final triumph. Immediately 
after Bull Run Southern men claimed that 
God’s hand was shown as reached out for 
State rights as against national centralization. 
Each side in our contest had its praying men. 
And skeptics asked in sneering tone how 
prayer could avail on both sides—as if physical 
questions were the main issues; as if God 
could not answer both Northern and Southern 
prayers in His own providential way. ‘‘We 
are fighting for home and State,’’ said one 
side, ‘‘and so we can appeal to the God of 
battles.’ ‘‘ Weare fighting for our national 
life,’? said men on the other side, ‘‘and God 
must favor us.’’ In away, both success and 
defeat on each side contributed to the moral 
results God had in view. We were to be one 
nation. ‘Two peoples with only an invisible 
line between them would have been in con- 


96 Divine Providence 


stant warfare. Slowly there emerged the great 
moral issue. From the hour of the Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation things took anewturn. The 
abolition of human slavery in a free nation was 
clearly the Divine end, and our better unity 
as one nation was to be secured thereby. On 
both sides good men were praying, it may be 
somewhat blindly, but truly, for what they 
thought right. And God saw the right, and 
in ways no man expected, the happy issue 
came. ‘The passions of bad men on both sides 
as well as the prayers of good men, were 
wrought into the mighty plan of the Divine 
Providence. He had a work to do by this 
nation among the other nations of the earth. 
We could do nothing for other nations with 
slavery in our own. 

And so whether it be Monitor and Merri- 
mac on the Chesapeake, or fleet of Orange 
and James on the English Channel, the God 
who institutes and employs national life in 
working out his plans, is to be recognized. 
Through peace and through war, by states- 
men in their rise and their fall, and by nations 
in their most foolish mistakes and in their 
wisest plans, He carries on the vast concerns 
of His universe. He is great enough to leave 
every man to all his human freedom, and so 
his liability to err, and yet to bind our hu- 
manity in all its various and complicated 
interests fast to His own eternal throne. 


Providence in ational ‘bistoryp 97 


Not a little fault is found to-day with na- 
tional lifeas such. Its authority is questioned, 
its usefulness is denied. It is charged with 
the blame of innumerable evils. And these 
objections are due to the fad that government 
is looked upon as ‘‘a social compact,’’ asa 
merely human arrangement, as a voluntary 
copartnership. That ‘‘ governments derive 
their just powers from the consent of the 
governed,’’ is true as to the form they may 
take, as monarchial or republican, as absolute 
or representative. It is overlooked by many 
that government is an institution deriving its 
tight to be from God Himself. Its authority 
inheres in the institution. ‘The children in a 
household do not assemble, enter into a ‘‘com- 
pact,’? and convey the right of reward and 
punishment to the parents. ‘The right inheres 
in the Divinely authorized institution of the 
family. (It is the same with the ‘* Divine 
right’’ of states. ‘T’he state decides on the 
method in which it will administer the trust. 
Law enacted by the state is not, as such, an 
oppression of the weak by the strong. It is 
often forgotten by those who decry nationality 
as the prolific source of innumerable evils, 
that society could not exist if the majority of 
the laws were bad. ‘“‘ The powers that be are 
ordained of God.’’ No other Oppression can 
be so disastrous as anarchy, and no other rule 
so bad as that of an irresponsible mob. So 


— 


98 Divine Providence 


conspicuously moral, in the long run, is God’s 
manifestation of His approval or disapproval 
in national affairs, that, at times, in its account 
of penalty and reward for the nations, the Old 
Testament seems to give more emphasis to 
this thing than to the spiritual affairs of indi- 
vidual men; thus using national prosperity or 
adversity as an object-lesson to set forth the un- 
changeable principles on which God deals with 
all mankind. ‘The Old Testament sometimes 
speaks as if a nation were some vast man en- 
dowed with reason and conscience, and so 
capable in itself of moral action. And yet, 
though we know that these are the endow- 
ments of individual men only, the moral con- 
viction of the great masses of a nation can 
find expression in state enactment; and in this 
sense the nation can become a moral agent. 
If men can thus work through the organiza- 
tion of the national life, how much more is 
there room for the unslumbering Providence of 
Almighty God! ‘‘He beareth not the sword 
in vain.’’ National life is invaluable for the 
social progress, and for the moral welfare of 
mankind. God’s hand is on and in it. 
Nations, then, have providential existence and 
mission. ‘Their power sometimes has been 
frightfully misused. But in ‘‘the ages to 
come’’ certain elements of nationality, sancti- 
fied by the moral freedom that the Gospel 
can impart, will ensure vast progress in the 


Providence in ational history 99 


Kingdom of God on the earth. In the in- 
terpretation of great historic events we must 
have wide horizons. God paints on a vast 
canvas. His plans are as wide as all human 
history. 

Let us recognize God everywhere. Let us 
not fail especially to recognize those especial 
events on which He lays providential empha- 
sis, at certain times along the courseof human 
history. At some periods, when we might ex- 
pect Him to speak out, He moves steadily on, 
keeping silence. His horizon is so much wider 
than ours, that the things we deem vastly im- 
portant are relatively small to Him. He may 
be reserving His emphasis for what we our- 
selves, further on, may see to need special ac- 
centuation. We would have Him declare Him- 
self as pleased or displeased in the immense 
affairs of national life. We would have Hiin 
interpret Himself as against any misunder- 
standing. But intermediate plans must yield 
to allow some greater final purpose to receive 
its grand accomplishment; and only then can 
the frown or the smile be shown. 

Nor are frown and smile over single and sep- 
pes the main things; nor are physical 

nts the chief events in which He manifests 
approval or disapproval; the one great purpose 
to which all else is contributory, the one end 
toward which all kingdoms on earth are mov- 
ing, is the establishment of the Kingdom of 


100 Divine Providence 


God. Smile and frown over things along the 
course of human history are given or deferred 
according as they shall bear on final moral re- 
sults when ‘‘ the kingdoms of this world shall 
become the kingdoms of our Lord, and He 
shall reign forever.’’ 


VII 


PROVIDENCE AND PHYSICAL 
LAW 


In the year 1854 Professor Geo. I. Chace, 
LL.D., of Brown University, a careful scien- 
tific scholar and a devout Christian, delivered 
before the Porter Rhetorical Society of Andover 
Theological Seminary, a finished oration on 
‘““The Relation of Divine Providence to Phy- 
sical Law.’’? It was published at once and 
was largely circulated. And tho it awakened 
not a little discussion alike from those Chris- 
tians who were not scientists and from those 
scientists not Christians, it probably represents 
the high-water mark reached at that time by 
Christian scholarship on that subject. 

Since his day two conceptions have obtained 
a prominent position in scientific and philo- 
sophic and theological circles. They are (1), 
that of evolution; and (2), that of the Divine 
immanence in the world. And both these 
conceptions affect largely the argument in 
which Professor Chace so ably defended his 
views of Divine Providence. 

Had that eminent scholar been living to-day 
he would doubtless have been among the fore- 
most to accept the doctrine of ‘‘ development; ”’ 


Ior 


102 Divine Providence 


tho, of course, as a devout and scholarly man, 
he would have held it, in company with very 
many foremost scholars, in its Theistic and 
Christian form. It would have made him 
prefer, it may be, terms drawn from the idea of 
the growths of nature rather than those 
he constantly uses, in which he describes the 
world as a ‘‘fixed mechanism.’’ But he 
would have contended earnestly that there was 
no evolution in the laws of his favorite science 
of chemistry. ‘They are exactly the same as 
when the world was made. ‘They are abso- 
lutely fixed. All development, he would con- 
tend, is not in the laws of chemical science 
but in our knowledge of them. The absolute 
permanence of physical law is the essential 
contention of his address. 

The other conception, viz., that of the 
‘‘immanence of God in the world’’—an old 
doctrine found for centuries in theological dis- 
cussions, but recently emphasized anew— 
would have compelled him, if not to abandon 
some of his positions, at least so far to modify 
them that he would have seen no limitation 
but rather an extension of the scope of Provi- 
dence, in all physical law. 

In his eloquent discussion he has in view 
those who mistakenly look for providences in 
the infraction of natural law, and he would 
also find due place for the intervention of 
Christianity, with its facts and miracles, on the 


Providence and Pbysical Law 103 


ground they are in the sphere of morals and 
religion. ‘The fundamental fact, as we should 
expect from one devoted to chemical science, 
is the ‘‘invariability of manifestation ’’ in phy- 
sicallaw. Physical laws are the fixed things; 
the ten commandments of the physical system. 
Nothing must touch these laws. He has in 
mind throughout the whole oration those to 
whom providences, if not miraculous, are, 
at least, semi-miraculous; are so near akin to 
miracles, that no definite line can be drawn 
between them and miracles. All such things 
Prof. Chace rules out of court. And his dis- 
cussion on these points is of permanent value 
in correcting the views of those who even to- 
day find the providential only in the strange 
and the semi-miraculous. He holds firmly to 
the idea of Providence, but finds its scope out- 
side of natural law. He maintains that the 
beneficent arrangements in nature are to be 
ascribed to creation rather than to Providence. 
He calls the entire system of the world a ‘‘mech- 
anism.’’ He insists, and rightly, that the 
popular view, held then, and too often held to- 
day, that infractions of an established order to 
meet emergencies, can not be true, since such 
changes would shake the stability of the whole 
system of things. But he makes, also, the re- 
markable claim that there can be exceptions 
in the moral vealm, and that ‘‘ the same dif_i- 
culties do not attend the supposition of Divine 


104. Divine Providence 


interpositions in the moral as in the natural 
world . . . since mind, unlike matter, is 
subject to moods.’”’ In this way he finds a 
place for Christianity, with its corroborative 
miracles, as a partof the moralorder. In de- 
fending prayer, he remarks ‘‘ that we have 
only to conceive provision made for its answer 
in the constitution of things.’? Prayers for 
physical things, concerning which the will of 
God is unknown to us, ‘‘ are legitimate subjects 
of petition.’’ He holds that the ‘‘idea of a 
great First Cause continually operating, and 
evolving the changes of the physical world in 
harmony with the moral . . . is attended 
with grave dangers.”’ 

As against any alteration of natural law he 
urges the facts of the ‘‘ original endowment of 
each atom,’’ and that each of these atoms has 
“fixed chemical relations.’’ He instances 
gunpowder, so made up chemically that it 
must explode when touched by fire. And he 
further urges that the experience of mankind 
‘except when such events have been mani- 
festly supernatural,’ does not furnish proof 
‘“‘that the agencies of the natural world are 
directly employed by God in the advancement 
of His moral government ;’’ that it is not 
proved ‘“‘that when people have declined in 
virtue the heats have been less parching, the 
draughts less withering, etc.’? He thinks that 
‘“egotism’’ and the ‘‘emotional state of 


Providence and Pbysical Daw 105 


mind ’’ are responsible for the interpretation 
placed on a large number of physical events 
which Protestants call ‘‘providential’’ and 
Roman Catholics term ‘‘miraculous.’’ He 
will not deny that some such things may have 
occurred occasionally; but he would admit 
them to be ‘‘ providential’’ or ‘‘ miraculous’’ 
only with the greatest reluctance. And, on 
his theory of Providence, his reluctance is 
fully’ justified in this demurrer. Notwith- 
standing the new emphasis placed to-day on 
the immanence of God in nature, which com- 
pels an entirely new idea of the scope of God’s 
providential dealing, the strange mistake is 
still made by multitudes of devout men that 
only those things are providential that are 
thought to be semi-miraculous. ‘The unusual 
things, the otherwise unaccountable events, 
the things outside of known law—these only 
are providential. That this conception should 
be discarded by thoughtful men on any theory 
of Providence, even on the narrow one held by 
the professor, is evident. But there isa wider 
outlook. And those who hold that there is 
Providence zz law as well as over law, believ- 
ing both in the Divine transcendence and the 
Divine immanence, object to any view that 
does not find a continuous Providence over all 
things in God’s universe. 

Dr. Chace, in a foot-note, ventures on the 
attempt, always so dangerous in moral discus- 


106 Divine Providence 


sion, of giving a ‘‘hard and fast’’ scientific 
definition of Providence. He says: ‘‘ The 
word Providence is used in two different senses 
: In its wider and more general signifi- 
cation the whole course of human actions and 
events, everything which has transpired in our 
world, may be said to be included in God’s 
Providence, inasmuch as it has proceeded from 
the constitution of things which He estab- 
lished, and must from the beginning have been 
foreseen by Him. In this sense every occur- 
rence may be spoken of as providential. In 
its narrower signification the word is used to 
denote a system of special provisions for secur- 
ing certain definite and specific ends. Only 
that which is directly provided for, which is the 
object of direct contrivance, design, and pur- 
pose, can be said to be embraced in the Divine 
Providence. It is in this latter sense that the 
term is to be understood in the present dis- 
ctission.’’ 

Since the vast number of events that occur 
are of the former kind, the place, on this 
theory, for providences must be very narrow. 
To the former class, avoiding the name of prov- 
idences, Dr. Chace gives the name “‘ of events 
occurring under the government of God’’— 
tho sometimes, almost unwittingly, the word 
‘“providences’’ is used; as when he speaks of 
the three ways in which God may control men, 
viz.: 1. ‘‘ Remotely and indirectly by the phy- 


Providence and Pbysical Law 107 


sical organization and arrangements of the out- 
ward world;’’ 2. by ‘‘ the original constitu- 
tion, conferred or transmitted, of each human 
being;’’ 3. by ‘‘the direct influences of the 
Holy Spirit.’’ ‘‘ The avalanche pauses not; 
but the traveler may be removed from the 
place overwhelmed by it.’’ 

The doctrine of the oration everywhere is 
this, viz., that great events are all under law 
in the physical world, and that these are not to 
be regarded as providential. He says: ‘‘ To 
imagine every occurrence of my life, however 
trifling, the subject of a Divine purpose is 
absurd and derogatory to God.’’ Butno man 
can draw the line in a universe like this where 
the largest events turn on the smallest hinges, 
between the great and the little; between the 
important and the unimportant. The just 
emphasis more recently given to the Divine 
immanence would seem quite to obliterate this 
somewhat wavering line of distinction. It is 
now insisted that God anywhere is God every- 
where; tho this does not hinder but that we 
may tegard His presence as more central in 
places, and His favor at times as more or less 
propitious, His manifestation as more or less 
evident, and His emphasis as more or less dis- 
tinct. He is as really present as a providen- 
tially sustaining power when the wicked man 
does his wickedness and receives therefor the 
Divine frown, as when the good man does his 


108 Divine Providence 


righteous deed and receives therefor the Divine 
favor. The fall of the sparrow and the 
numbered hair are embraced in a careful provi- 
dence. 

And the line between the events due to fixed 
law and those considered outside of it also dis- 
appears when we remember how many things 
are now included under law which were 
thought when the oration was given to be out- 
side of physical law. ‘The lightnings are now 
known to be obedient to ‘‘laws of material 
attraction.’’ Cause is found for things once 
thought to have no cause in nature, and 
therefore deemed supernatural. Great realms 
of nature are yet unexplored and are believed 
to be ready to yield their secret of fa& and law 
to patient investigators. In the narrow and 
mistaken view, the more known the less 
place there is for the Providence of God; 
in the better and broader view—the view 
alike more philosophical as well as more Scrip- 
tural—the more law known the larger scope 
for our observation of God’s providential hand. 
The physical world viewed with reference to 
its origin may be spoken of as a work of 
creation; in its processes, as an unfolding of 
Providence. For who shall decide for us what 
events are and what are not in due process of 
law? It is obviously a mistake to regard some 
things that occur as outside of law and there- 
fore providential; and it is equally a mistake 


Providence and Pbysical Law 109 


to regard some things as inside of law and 
therefore not providential. 

The narrower theory seems also to place 
every natural law beyond the sphere of any 
personal control. It is true that some very 
scholarly men admit a God who made the 
original law of things; and some will go 
further and admit that He works the law 
He has made—is executive at every mo- 
ment in every place. And yet the fact that 
there are scientific scholars who push law 
to the exclusion of God, shows the danger 
of the trend. It is the joy of human life 
that God can be so depended upon for do- 
ing steadily and regularly certain things. We 
can depend upon the sunrise and sunset, and 
the courses of the seasons, and the stability of 
the earth on which we tread; upon ‘‘ the seed 
that bringeth forth its own kind,’’ upon spring- 
time and harvest. The ‘‘ course of nature’’ 
is an established fact inviting human faith and 
inciting human endeavor. It is so regular 
and steadfast, that we call it ‘‘alaw.’’ ‘‘’The 
uniform occurrence of natural phenomena’’ is 
the basis of natural science. And it is not 
strange that men whose studies and tastes lead 
them along these paths of investigation, some- 
times forget that ‘‘law’’ is but the name for 
a process; and that it accounts for neither 
origin or continuance. It must not, in any of 
our careful thinking, be made the ‘‘ author or 


110 Divine Providence 


finisher’’ of anything. It is not God. It 
never can take His place. It only describes 
phenomena seen in certain aspects. And yet 
how easily the semi-philosophical mind is in- 
duced to think that in finding law it has found 
its cause; and there is a popular sentiment by 
which impersonal law stands for a personal 
God, and men think they have accounted for 
something by saying it comes about by a ‘‘law 
of nature.’? The more exact form would bea 
‘law of God in nature,’’ a law instituted and 
operated by Him. Some devout men are 
always asking if we can not find room for 
Providence amid these fixed natural phenom- 
ena. And they would beg some little place 
for a free God to use His own personality in 
His own universe. ‘They are glad not to have 
Him quite crowded aside. ‘They seize on the 
least skeptical concession and make the most 
of it. They take with gladness any smallest 
crumb which scientific dogmatism of a certain 
sort may deign to throw to those under its 
table. And all this because in natural events 
whatsoever is considered inside of law is con- 
sidered outside of God. But the broader view 
would answer all objections, and flood the 
whole subject with Divine light; and men 
would continue to talk no less of law, because 
talking more of God. ‘Takea case of physical 
disaster. A noble ship, freighted with pre- 
cious merchandise and yet more precious lives, 


Providence and Physical Daw 111 


encounters in mid-ocean a fearful storm. ‘T‘he 
tempest falls on that doomed bark and 
crushes her beneath the waves. Many of her 
crew perish. A few, lashed to spars and 
planks, float awhile in the sea until they are 
rescued by some passing ship. Listen, now, 
to the comments. ‘The scientific atheist talks 
of the wreck and the rescue. It all came about 
through fate or chance; or, if he belongs to 
another school, by impersonal law. Hot air 
ascends, and cold air rushes in to fill its place. 
Thus the storm arose. Some were drowned 
by their own carelessness, or the ship was un- 
seaworthy, perhaps was badly navigated. By 
mere chance the rescuing and the wrecked 
ship met each other. In this view, there is 
no God. It is all accident, fate, or law. 

Hear the semi-skeptic. He does not exa&tly 
deny, but only doubts a Providence; anything 
called such by any man he instantly distrusts; 
if any Providence, it is to be considered very 
general. He hesitates whenever anything, 
however great or small, in national or in per- 
sonal life, is said to be providential. He will 
have as few providences as possible. He will 
express distrust about any one event or any 
one circumstance in any event as Divinely di- 
rected. He thinks that just so faras you have 
law you can get on without owning God. If 
no reason can be given for anything that thing 
may, perhaps, at least indirectly be providen- 


112 Divine Providence 


tial—as if God were infinitely unreasonable. 
If the ship that rescued the mariners had 
leaped a hundred miles so as to be at the 
wreck; if the waves had refused to be fluid 
about the suffering bark, and so could not 
overwhelm her; if the ocean had interposed 
to save rather than had its usual power to 
drown these mariners; if there had been any- 
thing approaching the miraculous in the affair, 
then there would be probable reason for in- 
quiry about a providence of somesort. If the 
semi-skeptic has any early religious ideas still 
lingering in his mind, he asks whether there 
may not be, even without the semi-miraculous, 
some narrow place for God’s Providence; 
some small crevice into which Providence may 
have entrance; some little projecting angle on 
which it can gain a precarious foothold; some 
obscure and unoccupied place into which we 
may see Providence crowding itself. 

Hear the Christian as he offers his com- 
ments. He owns, he evenclaimslaw. ‘There 
was law, of some kind, physical, mental, or 
moral, in all the disaster and rescue. He 
owns man’s agency. He praises or blames 
the men for their share in the whole transac- 
tion. And, likewise, he owns God acting 
through fixed laws and through free men. He 
can not attempt to parcel out the matter, and 
say that here it was all God and not at all 
man, and there it was all man and no God; 


Providence and Pbysical Law 113 


here, the result of an original law of nature, 
and there an over-mastering of natural law for 
moral ends; but, in each part, unceasing law. 
In such man’s act there was his human 
power and responsibility. And over all, and 
in all, and through all, there was in every 
minutest thing, in crest of every breaking 
wave, in the act of every rescuing and rescued 
sailor, in the combination of circumstances 
toward a given result, in the exact timing of 
every item in each part and in the whole 
affair, there was the overarching and all- 
comprehending Providence of God. And the 
saved mariner, standing on the deck of the 
vessel which has rescued him, praises the skill 
and daring of the men who periled their lives 
in his behalf, and as a Christian does not forget 
also to build his altar of devout gratitude to 
his God. He selects here and there a special 
item in the whole transaction, and, considering 
it alone, he sees in it a special providence, and 
remembers Christ’s own description of Provi- 
dence when He spoke of ‘‘the sparrow that 
shall not fall without your Father.” 

it may be asked, ‘‘ What of the sorrowful 
side of the event; the loss of human life ; the 
loss of the property of needy owners; the 
decrease of the world’s wealth and welfare from 
the engulfing of the remorseless ocean?’’? Of 
the lost seamen we may say: ‘There is an 
appointed time for man on the earth. His 


114 Divine Providence 


days aredetermined. ‘Thou hast appointed his 
bounds that he can not pass.’’** Of the loss 
to the owner of ship and cargo, we may say 
that possibly the providence is punitive, z.e., 
there is suffering in the physical sphere for 
wrong-doing; or, it may be that the suffering 
is disciplinary, z.e., intended in the end not as 
penalty, but for the man’s moral good; or, yet 
again, it may be that his suffering is vicarious, 
the noblest form of sorrow coming to the man 
not as so much harm to himself for wrong- 
doing, nor as so much help to him in future 
right-doing; but as enabling him to show 
the noble way to take trouble, and thus to 
exhibit virtues of patience and resignation for 
the helpfulness of his fellow men. And as to 
the loss to the world’s property, this may be 
said: that the loss of that one ship may save 
many others from its fate by inciting men to 
build their ships more carefully and sail them 
more skilfully. We can often tell what is 
loss, in the narrower sense of that word; but 
in the broader view in which we believe ina 
wise Providence, it is permitted us to think 
that there is sometimes a gain in loss, a sticcess 
in defeat, a blessing in what at first sight 
appeared a curse. God’s angels of shadow 
sometimes are seen, when coming nearer, to be 
white-winged, and their hands heavy with 
Divine favors. Bethel hasa pillow of stone, but 


* Job vii: 1, xiv: 5, 20. 


Providerce aid Pbysical Daw 115 


it has, also, resting on that stone, a golden 
ladder, ascending into God’s protecting 
heavens. All men with experience of life, 
have found physical trouble to yield moral 
profit. And if we can so use it, how much 
more can God employ it in his providential 
dealing with men. But to look for the Divine 
favor or disapproval chiefly in the physical 
world of fact and of law, is a form of narrow- 
ness equalled only by those who never are 
willing to own God’s useof physical things for 
moral ends. ‘To see only physical fact and 
law is to see only the outside of the world. 
That grand organ may be correctly described 
as consisting of so much oak frame and so 
many wooden or metal pipes. ‘That is the 
visual all of it; that is the organ as a physical 
fact. But is it the all of the organ, when the 
wind breathes through the pipes and skilful 
fingers touch the keys? One sees only the 
smallest part of the world who sees it as an 
article of machinery made under the law of 
mechanical structure. There is vastly more 
to the world than physical facts and the laws 
of them. 

There must be left, in all our thinking on 
this matter, a large place for the heart of Godin 
its freest exercise. He may judge it both wise 
and kind to hold Himself firmly to His original 
arrangements whereby fluids shall be less 
capable of upbearing man than solids; and so 


116 Divine Providence 


because of this wise and good law, these sail- 
ors on the wreck must perish. He may see 
that this is better than that His usual method 
of working by what we call law, should be 
forsaken by Him. Were intervention needed 
for highest moral ends, clearly He is able to 
intervene at the time and place of the wreck. 
He is evolving a vast plan, moral in its ends, 
which includes the use, during a limited 
period, of physical law. He is showing men 
by physical law what they may depend upon 
in carrying on the world’s work. But God is 
not hardening His heart against the physical 
pain, which in the instance of those sailors 
is the necedsary friction of physical law. And 
in the case of the rescued mariners, no heart 
among them is more glad than the heart of 
God. 

And it is this fact of profound sympathy 
that makes this universe no dead mechanism 
under impersonal law, but a universe awake 
and alive with a perpetual Divine Providence. 
The world is throbbing with the heart-beat of 
the great God. Quoting the verse of the 
Scripture that says, ‘‘ Tho He slay me yet 
will I trust in Him,’’ Prof. John Fiske says: 
‘‘’The man who has acquired such faith as this 
is the true freeman of the universe.’’ * 

It is a strong argument for the truthfulness 
of the view now presented that it has nourished 


* Riske, ‘‘ Mystery of Evil,” p. 54. 


» 


Providence and Pbysical Daw 117 


in New Testament ages as well as in those of 
the Old ‘Testament, the most stalwart forms of 
the religious experience; that, as the exact 
opposite of eastern fatalism, the belief in the 
Ever-Living, Ever-Present God has put new 
vigor into life, and as the antidote of skeptical 
frivolity it has made existence more serious, 
and noble, and glad; that it has brought ten- 
derest consolation in sorrow, highest grati- 
tude in prosperity, and strongest impulse in 
duty; that it makes the world alive with God, 
vocal with His voice, plastic and yet firm with 
His touch; that it rouses and yet satisfies the 
deep yearning in us each for One who is no 
absentee God, but who is ‘‘nigh at hand.’’ 
Devout hearts may have had no large philoso- 
phy about all this; but they have had what 
was better—the large fact itself. ‘They say, 
as they have come to know God through 
His Word, and His world, ‘‘that all things 
have become new; and all things are of God.’’ 


VIII 


DIVINE PROVIDENCE AND 
HUMAN PAIN 


WE are living in an age peculiarly sensitive 
to the fact of human pain. We look back to 
those centuries when ‘‘ man’s inhumanity to 
man ’’ was shown by especial barbarity in war, 
and by cruel torture and imprisonment for all 
who were even suspected of crime, and we 
felicitate ourselves upon an age more merciful 
and mild. We rejoice in wonderful discov- 
eries in medicine whereby human pain is less- 
ened. But when we have done our little all 
in these directions, there still remains the 
great and terrible anguish of our common 
humanity. It can not be ignored. In any 
view we take of Providence, it must have its 
due weight and its fair consideration. ‘‘I 
would not be a physician for all the world,”’ 
saida lady. ‘‘I am too tender-hearted to en- 
dure the sight of pain. I always turn away 
from it.’’ ‘‘Madam,’’ was the apt reply of 
the physician, ‘‘I’m too tender-hearted when 
pain exists not to use my art to the utmost 
for the relief of pain.’’ ‘The frivolous mood 
would shut the eyes. ‘The optimistic spirit 

118 


Divine Providence and human Pain 119 


would see only the glad things. It would 
make life a comedy, whereas it is always 
serious and sometimes tragical through human 
pain of body, and mind, and soul. 

The fact of pain has led some men to doubt 
the goodness, and even the existence of God. 
‘‘ Mother,’” said a young man, ‘‘ you taught 
me that God was good, and loving, and kind, 
and I believed it. But, mother, if God is 
good, how could He let my dear young wife, 
after so painful a sickness, meet with an early 
death? And then, as if that were not enough, 
how could He let death come again and take 
my only child? Mother, what does it all 
mean? How can God be good, and kind, and 
loving, and allow these things to be?’’ So 
thousands of bruised and bleeding hearts are 
saying under the blows of God’s Providence. 
The world’s sorrow is terrible. And men, 
who can not give up the idea of God, still 
feel that there is large blemish in His dealings 
with men. The young man above-mentioned, 
forgetting that the consumptive young wife 
was certain of an early death, and that their 
child, so born, could not be expected to live, 
suggested blame on the part of God. But all 
things save the pain are forgotten in such ter- 
rible hours. Overlooking the fa& that itis, on 
the whole, better, as well as wiser, for God to 
work by law, men think that Almighty love 
and power should have acted so as to prevent 


120 Divine Providence 


the catastrophe in their lives. And this would 
be true, were there nothing else to take into 
account but the one attribute of Divine love. 
The argument of the tortured heart is this: 
“Given a good God, there ought not to be 
pain anywhere in His universe.’” Some think 
they could get on with the idea of pain in the 
universe of a good God, if it always did the 
sufferer good. But that is plainly not so. 
Some think they could endure the idea, if sure 
that the pain would not go on into the next 
world. Butitis plain that if sorrow can exist 
in this world and God be good, then it may 
exist beyond this world and God be good. 
And yet the real logical trouble is not with the 
severity of pain or with its endurance in this 
or in the next world, but in its existence 
at all in any part of the dominions of God. 
Reasoning from the single perfection of God’s 
love, one pang of pain ought not to exist. 
But God is, and pain is. And hence such rea- 
soning from one perfection of God is certainly 
fallacious. And if pain be charged to the 
account of a ‘‘plan of things,’’ as the neces- 
sary friction of the plan, the question is sim- 
ply pushed a little further back, and we ask, 
“Why sucha plan?’ Let us hasten to own 
here a mystery. But no mystery can destroy 
a fact. God exists, and pain certainly endures 
from generation to generation. So that there 
must be in the Divine mind a good and suffi- 


Divine Providence and human Pain 121 


cient reason for its existence. He usesit asa 
large factor in His providential government of 
the world. 

There are, however, certain considerations 
which, while not entirely accounting for this 
feature of the Divine government, do yet 
lessen greatly the severity of the problem as it 
is related to God’s Providence. Let us look 
at them carefully. 

I. Weare environed by a physical world that 
is not in normal condition, and we are related 
to it—and hence pain. ‘‘ The creation is in 
bondage,’’ says Paul. And observation agrees 
with declaration here. That God should 
have made a world like this with its ideals 
still legible and yet a world so ‘‘ marred in the 
making,’’ seems strange, until we notice that 
it was to be the abode of man considered as a 
being out of his normal condition. Here are 
ideals, and over against them facts of imper- 
fection and sometimes of contradiction. 
Surely this present state of the material world 
in its disorder is not according to the ideal 
it suggests of order. It is not the fresh young 
world, harmonious and unstained, that came 
forth from the hand of God. Something is 
“out of plumb.’’ Something somewhere is 
wrong, both in the man himself and in his 
physical surroundings. And more than that. 
His intellectual and moral environments are 
equally disorderly and unharmonious. ‘There 


122 Divine Providence 


are infinite ideals. But those infinite ideals 
mock the mechanic at his work, mock the 
farmer at his plow, mock the architect as he 
builds, mock the moralist as he acts and the 
philosopher as he thinks. And all this environ- 
ment bringspain. Putaright man in a wrong 
environment and there is pain. Put a wrong 
man in a wrong environment, and on yet 
another side of his nature there is pain. 
Further, our whole organism of body, and 
mind, and soul is such that capacity for happi- 
ness is also, and to the same degree, capac- 
ity for pain. Press my hand gently with the 
hand of your friendship and it gives me pleas- 
ure; pierce it, and it gives me pain. It is the 
same hand. ‘The eye, through the delicacy of 
its construction, is a source of delight. It is, 
therefore, the more capable of giving pain 
when the sand grain enters its lids. It is so 
with every faculty of the intellectual and 
moral being. The memory may have in its 
keeping a whole brood of dark and evil things 
that shall haunt a man, like avenging demons, 
sometimes on earth and always beyond; or, on 
the other hand, it may be ready to send forth 
from its store the white-winged messengers of 
peace and joy as his earthly companions and 
as welcoming presences when he enters heaven. 
And this power of will in us that we use daily 
in things right or wrong, making the thou- 
sand smaller choices which give indication of 


Divine Providence and human Pain 123 


some great moral choice that is to control all 
the inner life—this power of will can let in or 
keep out all best influences; and so this faculty 
can bring us equally greatest joy or greatest 
pain. 

Men have given us their long and careful 
speculations on the question whether God 
could make men with capacities for joy that 
would not be also capacities for sorrow. But 
this is certain, that in man God has made a 
being who rejoices or suffers by the right or 
by the wrong use of the same set of faculties. 
To a being so made up, every threatening, 
whether a voice of nature or of revelation, is 
simply an inverted promise; and thus the 
existence of sorrow is proof of a capacity for 
joy. God said: ‘‘I set before you this day a 
blessing and a curse.”’ 

II. Weare all in the race-bond, andso havea 
heredity of evil—and hence also pain. Some 
would even declare that the largest part of 
human pain comes to us by way of this heri- 
tage. In a previous chapter* it has been 
shown that, as before all possible systems that 
we know, this race-bond is on the whole the 
best—and yet it has a terrible entailment of 
sorrow. ‘The time has gone by when men held 
in their gay optimism that human nature was 
well nigh perfect and only needed a little good 
training unto absolute perfectibility. Even 
 & See Chapter IV. 


124 Divine Providence 


those who discard the Christian theory of 
things admit that ‘“‘man is in his fur,’’ from 
which he is emerging; that the ‘‘ brute in man ”’ 
is an actual thing; that the lower has control 
of the higher. Andhereinispain. And each 
of the forms of the development theory ‘‘ has to 
confess the presence of pain in the process of 
advancement.’’ It comes not only from the 
development of self but from the relation of 
self ‘‘ to the other man.’’ 

And this leads to the remark that any system 
whatever will have its fri¢tion—and physical 
and mental and moral friction are other names 
for pain. In every piece of mechanism the loss 
of power coming from contact of part with part 
is to beconsidered. When this is too large, the 
plan, however good in other respects, has 
to be abandoned. The great problem in 
mechanics is to reduce this loss of power to the 
lowest terms; but all admit that friction will 
always exist. In civil affairs it is almost a 
maxim that the best law harms some one’s 
interests. Often public help is gained only by 
individual hurt. Every labor-saving device 
throws some worker out of employment; but 
the cheaper and better article benefits every 
man inthe community. Sometimes the hurt 
falls on a large class of men, and their suffering 
for a time is acute, tho the interests of the 
community as a whole are greatly advanced. 
And in the government of God the same prin- 


Divine Providence and human Pain 125 


ciple necessarily obtains. The good Provi- 
dence that guides the elements may hurt the 
individual farmer longing and praying for 
rain; but the rain must go elsewhere in the 
make-up of the year. For a whole land is to 
be considered as well as the one farmer’s few 
acres. ‘There is a general Providence as well 
asa special. It is not a general Providence in 
the sense that God has little to do with it, but 
in the sense that he has much to do with 
broadest interests. In such a world pain for 
some comes from plan for all. 

There is pain, also, from misunderstanding 
the method and purpose of Divine Providence. 
Mrs. Browning writes: 


‘* Grief may be joy misunderstood; 
Only the good discern the good. 
I trust Thee while the days go by.” 


The misconception by which providences are 
confined to outward things, is responsible for 
not a little of the pain many feelin the study 
of God’s ways. Not the external, but the 
spiritual must be considered as the main thing. 
It isa pain to see outward events go other- 
wise than we had hoped and prayed. But we 
forget, too often, that God has mainly our 
moral welfare in mind in His providential 
dealings. And this highest end may require 
the sacrifice of the nearer, and lower, and 
material interests. The pain of the sacrifice, 


126 Divine Providence 


however, is actual; but by a broader view the 
pain becomes not only endurable, but the de- 
vout heart may cry 


‘‘Even tho it be across that raiseth me, 
Nearer my God to Thee.” 


III. But the main question about pain is its 
relation to sin. Indeed, it might almost be 
said, that sin conceded, all the mystery of pain 
becomes the mystery of sin. All admit that 
a vast deal of physical pain is brought about 
by wrong-doing. Even those who hesitate to 
ascribe all suffering to sin admit that suffer- 
ing has in this way been greatly aggravated 
and multiplied. If we admit that God fore- 
saw the coming sin and made originally a 
world adapted not only for man as man, but 
for man as a sinner, conforming wisely the 
external world to the approaching fa@, He 
would be doing as does a wise general who 
before a shot is fired, has his ambulances and his 
surgical appliances ready athand. ‘To negle& 
this anticipated need would be criminal in the 
commander of an army. We may be sure 
that God took into His account the coming 
fact. Wecan think of the world outside the 
primal garden as made ready in tokens of 
physical convulsion, in deaths of beast and 
bird, for the advent of what was foreseen. 
Man was not, through the centuries, to be 


Divine Providence and Human Pain 127 


normal; no more was he tobe so in his physical 
environment.* 

The coming sin we may think of as having 
been duly considered not only in its occur- 
rence but in the coming redemption from it. 
The event as an event was in God’s Provi- 
dence, but the sin in the event was wholly 
that of a free moral being. The proposed 
rescue was to be alike a thing of Providence 
seen from one point of view, and of infinite 
grace seen from another. All trouble about 
the permission of pain is the original trouble 
about the permission of sin. Sin is the un- 
accountable thing, the unreasonable thing, 
the utterly mysterious thing. It is the thing 
without just cause, without right tobe. Itis 
a contradiction of God’s will. It is evil per- 
sonality as against the One Divine Person. 
How it could arise, how it could be permitted, 
why allowed—all this is the great unsolved 
problem. We can only say, not that it is a 
necessity, but that it is a possibility of free 
being in general. All we can do is simply to 
acknowledge the fact that natural and moral 
evil exist and are connected the one with the 
other. If we were separate Adams and had 
only this life to live, and if all acts and all 


* ‘The whole of the six days’ work of creation is so consti- 
tuted, that the foreseen consequences of sin were taken into 
account.” Delitzch, ‘“‘ Genesis,” p. 103. Similarly Dorner, 
“System,” p. 67. Bushnell, ‘‘Nature and Supernatural,” 
Similarly, Hitchcock and Hugh Miller. 


128 Divine Providence 


results of them related only to the external 
world, we might go out among men and 
wherever we found a great sufferer we could 
say, thereisa great sinner. But weare notsepa- 
rate Adams, nor is this world the all. So that 
holding fast, to the close connection between 
sin and sorrow, we “are not at liberty to 
trace a strict relation between the sins of indi- 
viduals and the outward calamities that befall 
them. It does not follow that because sin is 
often punished by physical evils, therefore all 
physical evils are the punishment of individual 
sins.’’* ‘That God should, because of the con- 
nection between natural and moral penalty 
use sometimes one and sometimes the other 
and sometimes both, is what we should expect 
and what we do actually find. It is clear that 
since outward calamity is often considered by 
men to have moral significance, it may be so 
considered and so used by God in His deal- 
ings with the race. We may also remember 
that pain ought not to be expressly according 
to deserts, since one use of pain is disciplin- 
ary; and so it should be sent according to the 
degree in which it can be useful. Some may 
require much more physical pain than others 
to bring about in them moral ends. The 
physical trouble is suggestive of higher dealing 
than that of impersonal law. And the man 
asks, as it was clearly intended he should do, 
* Orr, ‘“‘Christian View of God and the World,”’ p. 225. 


Divine Providence and human Pain 129 


“What does God mean by this thing?’’ It is 
true that, remembering the tendency among 
men, to connect very great sorrows with very 
great transgressions, we should use great 
caution in our interpretation of physical calam- 
ity or physical blessing. And it can ndtebe 
often enough insisted upon that outwardness, 
so far from being the all, is not even the main 
partin the Providence of God. His moral 
ends concerning us are the chief things in 
providences which have pain in them. 

This brings us direétly to consider the fa 
that there are three distin purposes in pain. 

Pain may be (1) Punitive; (2) Disciplin- 
_ary; (3) Vicarious. 

(1). Punitive pain is suffering coming to the 
wrong-doer as the punishment for his wrong- 
doing. The good of the offender is not now 
in view, but only the penalty of his offense. 
The simplest, the most dire&, and the one 
primary idea is this, viz., harm, hurt, sorrow as 
punishment for doing wrong. If other ends 
can be secured at the same time, they are 
secondary, and must not hinder or obscure 
this main thing, viz., punishment.* ‘TI ought 
to suffer for my wrong-doing,’’ is the convic- 
tion of a true man. ‘‘I shall most certainly 
at some time have to meet and pay the penalty 
of sorrow for that sin,’’ is the feeling the 


* “The idea of requital must be the principle of punitive 
justice.”’’—Pres, Woolsey, ‘‘ Political Science.’ Vol, ti D351: 


130 Divine Providence 


world over, when a man begins to think on 
the wrong he has done against self and fellow- 
man and God. ‘This is what is meant by the 
terms ‘‘penalty’’ and ‘“‘ retribution.” The 
definition of ‘‘ penalty ’’ is ‘‘ the consequences, 
as suffering or punishment, or as detriment or 
deterioration, or destruction, that follow the 
transgression of natural or Divine law.” * A 
man breaking the laws of health and suffering 
pain therefor, says often, ‘‘I’ve no one to 
blame for this suffering but myself.’’ It is 
the same with a temporary mental breakdown 
from overwork. It is the same with trans- 
gression of morallaw. Manya man, his moral 
nature roused, has felt that God ought to pun- 
ish him for his wrong-doing, and when the 
penalty came has seen that ‘‘he was only get- 
ting his deserts.’’ If there is a ‘“‘ moral order 
in the world,’’ then there ought to be penalty 
as well as reward. In persons of strong moral 
convictions nothing so much awakes suspicion 
of the Divine Providence and sometimes even 
doubt of the Divine existence, as ‘‘ the delay 
of God in the punishment of the wicked.” + 
Frivolous men, with little depth of moral na- 
ture, and small sense of sin in its relations to 
God, may wonder that there is any sorrow, 
and may even deny that there is any retribu- 
tory justice. But men of broader view and 


* ‘Standard Dictionary,” word “ penalty.” 
+ The title of a well-known treatise of Cicero, 


Divine Providence and human Pain 131 


stronger moral feeling, wonder, as they seethe 
oppression, and injustice, and iniquity of the 
world, that the penalty is not moreswiftly and 
severely enforced. Whatever of pain is penalty 
is no blemish on God, but is evidence of the 
blameworthiness of man. 

There is a widespread feeling against the 
idea of punitive justice. Some would have 
always the profit of the offenderinmind. But 
what of the other and deeper conviction that 
desert is the primary thing to be considered, 
and that only thus can we justify God in 
either inflicting or permitting such vast and 
wide-spread miseries as come upon mankind? 
We need just this explanatory fact. No judge 
punishes a man for his own good, apart from 
punishment deserved. He never selects an 
innocent man and punishes him for his own 
welfare. As a secondary idea only, in some 
circumstances, the reformation of the man is 
sought. ‘The primary and the essential idea is 
punishment inflicted for ill desert. 

One can see that there must be times of 
penalty in a moral universe; times when, in 
the affairs of nations and of individuals, the 
patient God must let punishment fall upon 
incorrigible transgressors. His mercy will 
not be laid aside. His mercy will defer as 
long as possible; and when He must bring in 
the judgment and inflict the penalty, that 
mercy may be believed to consider every 


132 Divine Providence 


extenuating circumstance. But at length 
Divine promise and persuasion and _ long- 
suffering have come to be abused through their 
very continuance. They are doing the man 
or the nation harm. ‘The sin is now against 
both justice and mercy. That time came to 
Israel in Jeremiah’s day, and he declared that 
no longer would even repentance avail. The 
destruction would certainly come. In the 
‘‘strong parables of doom’’ spoken against 
the Jews by our Lord in his last days, there is 
the sameidea. And He said, ‘‘ Your house is 
left unto you desolate.’’ Outward providences 
wrought with inward sorrows for the destruc- 
tion of the guilty nation. 

(2). But disciplinary pain is entirely unlike 
punitive pain. ‘The motive of God in sending 
it or in permitting it, is different. The object 
sought in this way of dealing is different. It 
comes to a different class of men, and it brings 
about a different class of results. It is now not 
‘*God as the judge of all the earth’’ who is 
acting, but God as the Father bringing His 
child into closer relations to Himself. It is 
God weaning one from self-trust, from undue 
love for the material world, from the tendency 
to make these earthly shadows the enduring 
substance, from looking upon ‘‘the things 
that are seen’’ and neglecting ‘‘the things 
that are unseen.’’ It is the gardener pruning 
the tree that it may bring forth more fruit. It 


Divine Providence and human Pain 183 


is not like punitive sorrow, visited upon the 
evil-doer as the ‘‘ penalty of his sin’’; but it 
comes for help to the well-doer as an induce- 
ment to do better. It seeks always the man’s 
good. It is not for the punishment of the 
disobedient but for the profit of the disciple. It 
sees not enemies but friends. And it has made 
many men better, in that life has become 
richer and deeper in its spiritual experiences. 
Sickness has been to some men God’s choice 
dealing, and outward failure has been made 
inward success. 


“‘Restless and oft complaining on his bed 

Tossed a fair child, while through his veins 

The fire of fever burned with restless pains. 
‘“Water, O, give me water,” constantly he said. 
By his side the healer stood and tenderly replied: 
“* Take but this potion now instead:”’ 

He would not drink. ‘‘’Tis poisonand’twill kill.” 
His father took the cup. ‘‘Myson, be sure 
This is a nauseous draught, but it may cure. 

Will my boy drink it?”” Thensaid he, ‘‘I will— 
I’m not afraid that it is poison now. 
You would not give it, father, were it so.” 


O, trusting childhood! I would learn of thee 
This lesson and so bind it to my heart 
That from me it shall never more depart. 
Thou shalt henceforth my teacher always be, 
For in thy perfect trust the sin I see 
Of my own doubts and fears, The cup of life, 
Though dregged with bitterness and strife, 
Is mingled by a Father’s hand in love.” 
—Burleigh. 


134 Divine Providence 


Many a Christian seeing the providential 
hand of a heavenly Father in some trial, has » 
declared that the choice wine of life is that 
drank from the cup of a sanctified sorrow. In 
weaker hours one may say, ‘‘ All these things 
are against me’’; but the revival of faith 
makes one say, ‘‘ All things work together for 
good to them that love God.’’ While this 
discipline lasts there may be pain, but its end 
is ‘‘ our profit.’’ Surely, tho we may not pray 
for pain, yet if God sends this form of dis- 
cipline, and we can recognize it as such, we 
shall not blame God, but submit cheerfully to 
His providential dealing. 

Closely connected with disciplinary pain— 
some would claim it as coming under the same 
head—is the pain of growth. ‘The creature 
increases in size, and with pain bursts the shell 
that confines it. ‘The boy complains of pains 
which the physician says are simply ‘‘ growing 
pains’’ that will take care of themselves without 
medical aid. Man’s emergence from lower to 
higher mental states is also attended with pain. 

Pain acts also asa preventive. It rings an 
alarm bell. It gives the signal that saves life. 
It rouses attention. It is self-disciplinary. 
The man whose nerves of sensation had been 
paralyzed and who had slept too near a lime- 
kiln, awoke to find veins and arteries eaten off 
by the lime. His life would have been saved 
had he felt pain. 


Divine Providence and human Pain 135 


Its use in such cases has been regarded as a 
providential arrangement for man’s welfare.* 

(3.) There is vicarious pain. 

Vicariousness is spoken of theologically as 
related to the work of Jesus Christ for the 
race. But out of the many elements that 
enter into the completed idea of vicariousness 
there are two that have large play in Provi- 
dence as well. 

These are: 1. Pain in another’s stead. 2. 
Pain for another’s good. 

Pain in another’s stead is a fact of common 
observation. The world appears to be consti- 
tuted on the idea of related personalities. 
Moral beings have relations so close that, to a 
degree, and in some circumstances, they can 
stand in each other’s place. ‘The burden can 
be shifted to another’s shoulders. For we men 
are in an organic relation. We are included 
in.a common race-bond. ‘True, some things 
can not be transferred. ‘There are matters in 
which every man ‘‘ must bear his own burden.’’ 
The guilt of sin can not be transferred, butthe 
consequences are not infrequently borne by an- 
other. Character can not be transferred, but 
the results of good or bad character are felt by 
those about us. We have to “‘ bear another’s 
burden ”’ in the results of hisacts. ‘The hard- 
hearted son does not suffer as does the loving 
father, whose gray hairs are brought down in 


* For remarks on the incidental uses of pain, see ChapterIX. 


186 Divine Providence 


sorrow to the grave by that boy’s wayward- 
ness. So common a thing is this transference 
of sorrow to another than the offender that the 
justice of it is often impeached. It is the hard 
problem in defending the Providence of God 
that the righteous have to suffer for the guilty. 
And tho we rightly claim that the solidarity of 
the race is, on the whole, a beneficent arrange- 
ment, it must be owned that there is this hard- 
ship about it. It is nolittletrial to one’s faith 
when we see sin bringing sorrow to the inno- 
cent. And the facts of corporate life disclose 
the same principle. In business, a man’s suc- 
cess or failure often depends quite as much cn 
his partner as on himself. In the family, the 
one selfish member makes the whole house- 
hold miserable. And in the community at 
large, malicious, and cruel, and treacherous, 
and drunken men bring about a vast amount 
of pain, and grief, and anguish. ‘The trouble 
falls on those who are not guilty of these sins. 
Taxes are to be paid, courts maintained, prisons 
built, hospitals founded, reformatories estab- 
lished and maintained by those who, innocent 
themselves, have entailed upon them, unwil- 
lingly often, the results of other men’s trans- 
gressions. Conseqttences are transferred. Bur- 
dens are placed on others’ shoulders. One 
man has to stand in the place of another, and 
take the fruit of his doings. More than this; 
the penalty sometimes seems to fall with re- 


Divine Providence and Human Pain 1387 


doubled force on the innocent. Connected by 
ties of family or friendship, those involved in 
the sad results of another’s wrong-doing may 
suffer with a keener pang because more sensi- 
tive, as belonging to a higher moral grade than 
the transgressor himself. ‘True, each sufferer 
was a sinner in a sinning race. But these suf- 
ferings transferred, in all their severity, from 
the offender to him, had no connection with 
any sin the sufferer committed. It is a clear 
case of one man standing in another’s stead; 
of pain ‘‘borne in the place of the other 
man.’ 

If this is so, then, from the principle estab- 
lished, we see the opportunity for a very noble 
kind of sorrow; the opportunity for a friend to 
suffer voluntarily for his friend; for one man to 
stand in the place where, by his suffering, he 
can benefit, sometimes, a whole community. 
He can, at least, submit to the inevitable asa 
wise appointment, the whole meaning of which 
will some day be disclosed. 

2. Pain for another’s good. We owe our 
birth to a mother’s birth-pangs. She watched 
about us with forgetfulness of her own pain 
and trouble when sickness came to us. She 
passed hours and days in our chamber, imperil- 
ing her life for ours. And when we came up, 
through her care, out of childhood to take our 
place in life, we found it a life in which every 
desirable thing was ours only through others’ 


138 Divine Providence 


toil and pain. Patriot blood flowed for the 
liberty into which we came, without our 
striking a blow; we entered upon the inherit- 
ance of educational privileges through insti- 
tutions established by the sacrifices made by 
others. ‘The whole world of invention and 
discovery gave .us blessings through others’ 
efforts. They labored, we entered into their 
labors. And so, getting awake to the mean- 
ing of things, we came to feel that we, in 
time, could fill our place only by toil and sac- 
rifice for ‘‘the other man.’’ ‘There were causes 
we had to advocate at cost of time and money 
and loss of friendships; sometimes at great 
personal risk and pain. And so we came into 
fellowship with the martyrs and confessors of 
the ages; the men who, for the common good, 
had suffered in name and fame, in body and 
mind and estate. But we are cheered by the 
hope that we make the world just a little bet- 
ter for having lived in it. We have borne 
pain for others’ good. 

But what of the involuntary sorrows forced 
upon us in God’s Providence? ‘These, also, 
may be sometimes less for our good than for 
that of others. We do not always see that 
others are benefited; but if God sees that it is 
best for us to contribute to the amount of vica- 
rious sorrow in His universe, it should be 
ours to submit. For if there is a God whose 
Wise Providence covers so many things in 


Divine Providence and human Pain 189 


which we gladly own His care, then in the 
things where we can not see how our suffering 
does others good, we can trust Him. Some- 
how our sorrows contribute to the great inter- 
ests of righteousness in the world. They may 
be in God’s list of things in which one man’s 
pain is somehow for other men’s good. In 
such a case, the pain is not for punishment, 
nor for discipline, but has this one element of 
vicariousness in it, that it is pain for the profit 
of those whom God appointed us to serve. 
Our bravery may make them strong. Our 
cheerfulness in sorrow may help them to be 
hopeful. And they may ask the secret of our 
Christian fortitude, and thus they, too, may 
find the ‘‘ way to God.”’ 


IX 
INCIDENTAL USES OF PAIN 


PAIN in man has its uses. It can be justified 
in part, sosome think, because it is a factor 
in a broad system of things which has moral 
ends in view. Moral uses, dire&tly or indi- 
rectly, are claimed not only for the system as 
a whole, but for each event in it. Whether 
God be considered as authorizing pain, or as 
only permitting it as part of a scheme on the 
whole wise and beneficent, His final ends, 
because always moral, are the ultimate justifi- 
cation of His Providence in human affairs. 

But what shall we say of pain in the lower 
animals? What shall we say of beings organ- 
ized in such a way, that they can not exist 
without giving pain to other creatures? 
What shall we say of a system of things in 
which a vast brute creation, not by any deprav- 
ity or deterioration, but by the constitution of 
their nature, are engaged pitilessly in destroy- 
ing others? What shall. we say of species 
made to prey and be preyed upon in turn? 
Think of the vast sufferings undergone by 
creatures outside the pale of moral beings. 
They have not sinned and so can not be either 

140 


Tncidental Uses of Pain 141 


undergoing punishment or subjected to dis- 
cipline for their own good. Some acute think- 
ers looking upon all this sorrow of the brute 
creation, undeserved and without moral profit to 
them, are more troubled by it than by anything 
else. It seems to have no purpose. These 
men, studying the sorrows of the lower ani- 
mals, are not a little inclined to deny any 
other Providence than that which ‘“‘has put 
some few general laws into the original crea- 
tion.’’ If logically driven either to go on and 
own a continuous Providence or else to go back 
and deny God by denying any Providence, 
they have taken the latter alternative; forced, 
as they say, to do this by the spectacle of such 
vast suffering in the animal world. 

The infidel view is stated in the words of 
Maudsley. ‘‘It looks to some as if there were 
an almighty and malignant power working 
out some far-off end of its own with serene 
disregard of suffering, expenditure, and waste 
entailed in the process.”’ 

The Christian view, owning the facts, and 
vividly presenting them, is thus given by 
Bushnell: ‘‘ If the whole creation is a frame- 
work of design, then it follows of necessity 
that all beaks and talons, all claws and cus- 
pidal teeth, all fangs and stings, and bags of 
venom are adapted to their particular uses as 
accurately as anything else is seen tobe. It is 
objected that the apparent badness of the 


142 Divine Providence 


design indicates a malign power working 
evidently for things not good.’’ * 

But Mr. Bushnell rightly discards some of 
the answers to the objection as altogether 
insufficient. ‘The plea of ‘‘over-production of 
animal life reduced by mutual destructions,”’ 
and the plea of ‘‘ compensation in the fact that 
many unsightly and injurious animals are of 
use as promoters of man’s physical welfare ’’— 
these and similar things which at best are 
mere alleviations and are not a philosophy of 
the matter in hand, are rejected almost scorn- 
fully by Mr. Bushnell. And cone of the 
popular methods of meeting the objection is 
even more to be repudiated, viz., ‘‘ that very 
many of the lower animals are less sensitive to 
pain than man.’’ For some of them, domesti- 
cated by man, have nerves that quiver with 
pain almost as much as those of our own race. 
Who has not seen a dumb animal looking up 
in its anguish into man’s face in an appeal for 
help? Who has not seen on the features of a 
human child, the strange look, after a parox- 
ysm of pain, as if asking, ‘‘ What does all this 
suffering mean?’’ Mr. Bushnell is nearer 
right when he says, ‘‘ There is no solution for 
this difficulty which stops short in the merely 
physical economy and the bodily conditions, 
This frame of things will never be understood 
without going back of ¢izugs and distinguishing 

* Bushnell, ‘‘ Moral Uses of Dark Things,”’ p. 274. 


fncidental Uses of Pain 143 


moval ends and uses.’’* Again he says, 
speaking of venomous creatures with their 
poison-bags: ‘‘ All that may be done with such 
tools is plainly meant to be done. God has 
created venom, and we must not scruple to say 
it. This shows that goodness is no such 
mawkish insipid character, no such mollusc 
softness swimming in God’s bosom, as many 
affect to suppose; but that it has resolve, pur- 
pose, thunder in it, able to contrive hard 
things when hard things are wanted.’’ t 
Everything on this earth, the ferocity of the 
larger beasts, the unsightliness and loathsome- 
ness of some of the lower forms of animal life, 
the pestiferousness of the insect world, and 
equally the beauty and dignity of the higher 
creatures about us, are all intended for some 
moral use. When Mr. Mill declares that ‘‘ the 
reconciling of infinite benevolence and justice 
in the Creator in such a world as this is 
impossible,’’ we admit that this is so, on the 
merely naturalistic plane. But we have the 
right to insist that when the discussion is 
about ‘‘God’s justice and benevolence,’’ 
which are moral qualities, the answer is to be 
sought on a vastly higher plane, viz., the 
moral plane. ‘There are moral uses of phy- 
sical things. Pain is unjustifiable anywhere, 
apart from moral ends. Material uses of 


'* Bushnell, ‘‘ Moral Uses of Dark Things,”’ p. 280. 
+ Bushnell, ‘‘ Moral Uses of Dark Things,” p. 282. 


144 Divine Providence 


material things are merely incidental uses of 
what demands, for final explanation, the idea 
of amoral purpose. Not the outwardness, but 
the inwardness of things, their usefulness to 
moral beings, is the consideration which is of 
chief importance. These facts of pain and 
of apparent mal-adjustment in the lower forms 
of life and of cruelty in the animal world, can 
be considered fairly and broadly only in their 
moral signification. 

But, let it be carefully noted, that the only 
moral being on this earth to make this moral 
use of them is man. 

And here comes into view the fact, insisted 
upon in a former chapter, that the environ- 
ments of man are conformed to man, so as to 
be of moral use to him. He has to face the 
problem of physical evil which, in its final so- 
lution, is the problem of moral evil—moral 
evil which comes only through a free moral 
being. Not physical happiness, as Mr. Mill 
seems to suppose, is the fit and worthy end of 
existence; not even the moral happiness of 
men. For there are ends higher than happi- 
ness; even those of holiness, as found in the 
Holy God himself as He will work out His 
holy will. The solution of these problems is 
not in regarding material things as the end, 
nor man as the end. What if we consider God 
as His own end in all the physical and moral 
universe ? 


Tncidental Uses of Pain 145 


It is because of a lower standpoint than this 
that the weakness of some systems of thinking 
is evident. They go a little way; but as a 
complete philosophy of the world, they fail. 

There is a form of natural development that 
puts no especial emphasis on moral ends. It 
expects a gradual evolution of the race by a 
natural process in which pain plays a neces- 
sary part. Sin is reduced toa minimum. It 
disappears, in some forms of this theory; so 
that, while the necessity of pain is owned, the 
existence of sin as the cause of pain is not 
acknowledged. Sin, if indeed we continue to 
retain the objectionable word, ceases to be a 
moral, and becomes an animal wrong. Itisa 
part of man’s original and necessary outfit. 
It is essential to any kind of virtue. It is not 
transgression of any law, but fulfilment of the 
law of our being. Sinis not to be regarded as 
spiritual or ethical wrong, but simply inferior- 
ity of plane. ‘The hope of the race is not in its 
coming to own the moral wrong of sin, for 
there is no moral wrong in it; but only lower 
animal nature. ‘The hope is not in repentance 
over the wrong, and in moral renewing, or in 
restoration to righteousness. ‘The process is 
not spiritual, but natural; from one natural 
state to a higher natural state, in which the 
moral, if it has any place, is merely incidental. 

But any theory of things that does not base 
itself on moral uses and ends, and see that side 


146 Divine Providence 


as the main thing, is certainly superficial. 
Nature,—including not only things, but the 
dumb animals who are dwellers in the physi- 
cal world as well,—nature is not normal, but 
abnormal. One does not need to go to the 
Scriptures for proof of this. If the story of 
Genesis were untrue, here all about us are 
fats of such a painful character that they 
show some terrible disturbance, disaster, and 
destruction. ‘These things crave an explana- 
tion far higher and deeper, and broader, than 
any merely naturalistic view can possibly give. 
Sin, a moral fact, with its ever-present shadow 
of suffering, goes further towards an explana- 
tion than any other that is offered. The ter- 
rible result in suffering shows the terribleness 
of the sin that is its cause. The earth was 
under the blessing of God once,—the evidences 
are still abundant. But the earth is under 
the curse as well,—the evidences are all about 
us. 

The solidarity of man with man is not 
more evident as one kind of solidarity, than 
is the solidarity, in other respects, of man 
with the world about him. He and it are 
in correlation. His body is of its dust. His 
physical brain is correlated with his mental 
thought and his spiritual emotion. His high- 
est intelletual life is expressed in language 
that is derived from physical objects. His 
highest science is psychology, in which the 


fncidental Uses of Pain 147 


human soul studies its own consciousness; 
but he uses in his study, necessarily, the 
words derived from physiology, z.e., science 
in which he studies his own bodily frame. 
He is one with physical nature in a part of 
his being, but is above physical nature in an- 
other part of his being. He is one with the 
animals in a part of his being, and is classified 
with them by naturalists. He is among the 
‘“Mammalia’’ in the genus ‘‘Homo.’’ Shall 
we deem it strange if the shadow of his sin 
falls on his world and his animal companion- 
ship? Would it not be more strange if there 
were no connection between the suffering of 
man and of the animal world; his death and 
their death? * And this is the meaning of the 


* The view of Bushnell, and Dorner, and Delitzch is given in 
a footnote on page 127. Itis that suffering and death in the ani- 
mal world before man is anticipatory, but not the less the con- 
sequence of man’s sin. But some thinkers on this problem 
make the connection not so much that of causation as of corre- 
lation. Death, according to Genesis—death of plant and beastin 
order to multiplication through decay and sustenance of further 
life—was before man; and yet, as the Scriptures abundantly 
insist, death was related to man’s sin. Suppose wethink of 
material nature as perishable in itself, by God’s original ordi- 
nance, and of animal life as, also, perishable in itself, But 
when man comesinto the world prepared for him, he strikes his 
roots down into the physical world and into the vast ages of the 
animal world—both worlds being, in their nature, perishable. 
But thatis not all. Man also starts a new rational and spiri- 
tual kingdom of being amid these other and lower kingdoms, 
This new spiritual nature given him is in itself immortal. It 
would have been able to spiritualize and make immortal that 
part of man which otherwise was perishable, so that bodily im- 
mortality would have come as the fruit of the ‘‘Treeof Life.” 
(Gen. ii: 22). But he sins, andthe mortal does not come to be 
immortal—until the resurrection of the just ‘at the last day.” 


148 Divine Providence 


phrase which represents all nature, both ani- 
mate and inanimate, as ‘‘under bondage to 
corruption.’’ Even Dorner says ‘‘sin retards 
this (ideal) perfection, and nature is detained 
in corruption; which was [would have been] 
unnecessary if the assimilation of nature by 
spirit could have been accomplished.”’ 

And so we are taught, among other things, 
by this pain the significance of man’s place in 
the creation of God. Man is not. little, but 
large. He touches all the world. 

So, too, by his existence here in a world of 
pain and amid disorderly things, and with 
loathsome objects about him, man becomes 
aware of the moral meaning of his existence. 
His situation iseven more moral than physical. 
His good may be subserved, to a certain 
degree, by his association of the sufferings in 
all nature with his own misdoings. What a 
fund of language we have in which to express 
the idea of the corrupt, and the unsightly, and 
the revolting! And these are the antago- 
nisins which, in certain probationary condi- 
tions, tend to emphasize the opposite idea, viz., 


Thus his pain and death is the result of his sin, and he comes 
into this correlation with the lower perishable forms of life, 
which awaited his advent by Divine foresight and ordination. 
This view connects suffering in the lower forms of animal life 
with man’s sin and suffering, none the less; butina different 
way. The suffering in the lower forms of life was made none 
the less, some would say, the more, premonitory toman. Heis 
its cause, less by direct consequence and more by designed cor- 
relation, It is the mirror that shows his sin. 


Incidental Uses of Pain 149 


that of eternal righteousness and happiness. 
Browning sings: 
‘““Can we love but on condition that the thing we 
love must die? 
Needs there given a world in anguish just to teach 
us Sympathy? 
Multitudinously wretched, that we wretched too, 


may guess 
Whata preferable state were universal happiness?” 


Man’s sin also becomes conspicuous. God 
has so arranged the world that its sorrows are 
immensely suggestive. In God’s providential 
dealings with man, the spectacle every day 
meets the human eye of an emphasis placed on 
sin; and also—as we shall presently see — on 
the rescue from it; Divine Providence working 
to these ends together with Divine grace. 

And the idea of retribution is imprinted on 
all these perishable things. It is a necessity 
of man’s moral training to see some scattered 
seeds of sin springing up indicative of a com- 
ing harvest, if men continue in wrong-doing 
toward their fellows and in wrong relations 
to their God. And this imprint is so deep, 
that we are set to look below the surface into 
the depths of the sin that brings this retribu- 
tion. The danger of thinking sin but a mere 
blemish on a statue otherwise nearly perfect, 
is thus avoided. ‘The outside things that men 
consider wrong are thus seen to be but a mere 
fraction of the sinfulness as noted by ‘‘ Him 
who looketh upon the heart.’? We come to 


150 Divine Providence 


feel that there ought to be this emphasis of 
the world-wide idea of retribution, so that 
men everywhere may be righteously afraid of 
the sin that has such vast providential conse- 
quences. And thus pain in the world, tho the 
fruit of sin, is so managed by Divine Provi- 
dence as to have moral uses of warning against 
sin itself. 

Another incidental use of pain is that, in 
some of its forms and in some circumstances, 
it seems to be a condition in the struggle to be 
better. Browning, using widest ‘‘ poetic 
license,’’ ventures on the phrase, ‘‘ blessed 
evil.’”’ If he is taken seriously, rather than 
poetically, this would bring him, as Bruce has 
well said, ‘‘ perilously near to confounding 
moral distinctions and making evil to be good 
in disguise, with equal right to exist in the 
universe, aS Spinoza contended.’’* But his 
robust English common sense and his constant 
conviction and contention about the tremen- 
dous evil of sin, forbid us to take his poetic 
utterances as a careful prose statement of his 
philosophy of the world. For there could be 
no struggle with anything so unreal as evil 
would be on that theory. He can only mean 


* Bruce, ‘* The Moral Order,”’ p. 294. 

+ A certain school of thinkers, reasoning upon the fact that 
the word ‘‘good’’ is one of the words that gets its meaning 
from the opposite word, the word ‘“‘ evil,’ have insisted upon the 
“necessity of evilin the world.’’ But the only necessity is that 
of the idea of it for purposes of discussion; not of evilitself as 
an actual fact. 


Incidental Uses of Pain 151 


that within certain narrow limits—it can not 
be true as a whole philosophy of pain—that 
physical and moral evil, considered as already 
existing, give opportunity for the virtue of 
overcoming them.* ‘They do not exist for 
that end. They are not necessary to virtue. 
Evil and its sad shadow of pain are, some- 
times, what storms are to the sailor, as they 
give him opportunity to show his seamanship; 
are what bloody battlefields are to the surgeon 
as he uses his art nobly in aid of the wounded. 
But one could hardly speak of ‘‘ blessed ’’ 
storms and battlefields. The blessed thing 
would be the skill of sailor and surgeon. The 
struggle to be good is sometimes, not always, 
attended with pain; not that pain does good. 
It is only an incidental fact. But peace is 
nobler than war. Earthquake and storm are 
occasionally useful. But a steady earth is 
best, as itis most common. And surely there 
are very noble successes in calmly rising from 
lower to higher forms of goodness. ‘To walk 
with firm and even foot in the paths of right- 
eousness must always be a nobler act than to 
struggle to get into that path. And yet within 
the necessary limit of its obvious meaning, 


* “* When the fight begins within himself 
A man’s worth something, God stoops over his head. 
Satan looks up between his feet—both tug— 
He’s left; himself—i’? the middle; the soul wakes 
And grows. Prolong the battle through his life! 
Never leave growing till the life to come!’ 
Browning, “ Bishop Blougram’s Apology.” 


152 Divine Providence 


Browning’s message to the world is to be 
heeded. His incidental truth—it is not a whole 
philosophy—is the glory of attempting rather 
than attaining. He sings: 


‘Endeavor to be good, and better still, 
And best! Success is naught, endeavor ’s all.” 


And in his ‘‘ Ben. Ezra’’; 


‘¢ Then welcome each rebuff, 
That turns earth’s smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids not sit nor stand, but go! 


Be our joys three parts pain! 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the 
throe. 


For thence—a paradox, 
Which comforts while it mocks. 
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail? 
What I aspired to be, 
And was not, comforts me; 
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the 
scale.” 


But when he carries the theory out of its 
own necessary limits into an explanatory phil- 
osophy of the world, he is involved in contra- 
diction. As when he says: 

‘‘ Though wrong were right 
Could we but know—still wrong must needs seem 
wrong 


To do right’s service, prove men weak or strong, 
Choosers of evil or of good.” 


But this uncertainty as to the vztal reality of 


Incidental Uses of Pain 153 


right as right and of wrong as wrong, not 
only contradicts all truth itself, but spoils all 
the virtue of the struggle as well. It contra- 
dicts, also, the positive teaching of his other 
songs. It annuls all the glorious optimism of 
his poetic message for the world. 

There is, also, a providential use, in God’s 
economy, of a certain degree of ignorance. 
The natural effect of ignorance, as of sin, is 
harmful, and not helpful. But where, by the 
limitation of our circumstances or our facul- 
ties, the truth can not be known, God can 
overrule even our ignorance for our good. And 
somnetimes a man can so use his ignorance 
as to bring in a higher principle—that of 
faith. The opportunity is furnished for 
“trusting God in the dark.’’ In itself, how- 
ever, ignorance is no more knowledge than 
wrong is right, or pain is pleasure, and it isno 
more to be praised than they. But by the 
Divine chemistry, a superior potency can be 
cast into it, as the healing branch of the prophet 
into the noisome spring. 

There is the further alleviation in studying 
the problem of pain, that it awakens the ten- 
derest sympathies of our human nature. Suf- 
fering is shared by brothers in suffering. 
Afflitions widen as well as soften hearts. 
There is a vast fellowship of pain, and there is 
a charmed circle entered only by those called 
to suffer. 


154 Divine Providence 


‘God gives us love. Something to love 
He lends us; but when love is grown 
To ripeness, that on which it throve 
Falls off, and love is left alone.”’ 


We come to feel that we are ‘‘ pilgrims and 
strangers,’’ and we ask about ‘‘a better coun- 
try. A ‘‘pilgrim’’ is a man with few friends, 
little business, and a home further on; a 
‘‘stranger’’ isa man of foreign birth, foreign 
manners, and another nationality. We come 
also to do that kindly thing—the emphasizing 
of the virtues of our departed. We praise our 
holy dead that we may give them living suc- 
cessors. 


‘‘ God calls our lov’d ones; but we 
Lose not wholly what He has given. 
They live on earth, in thought and deed, 
As truly as in His heaven.” 


And when suffering leads us to do as did 
the Bethany sisters, who sent for Jesus, its 
outcome is of great spiritual profit. If we 
go onward in our suffering to Him who was 
the great sufferer, we shall also go on with 
Him in thought now, and in experience by- 
and-by, to ‘‘ the resurrection and the life.’’ 


x 


PROVIDENCE IN REDEMPTIVE 
SORROW 


BUSHNELL has happily said, ‘‘Any hypoth- 
esis that gathers in, accommodates, and assimi- 
lates all the facts of a subject, gives in that 
one test the most satisfactory evidence of its 
practical truth.’’ | 

This is what is claimed for Christianity as 
administered by the Divine Spirit and by the 
constant Providence of God. Christianity is 
a system of historic facts closely connected 
with a vast series of other facts which thought- 
ful men have carefully studied in all ages. It 
did not make an original state of man with his 
primal powers and moral convictions. It finds 
him with these. It did not make the present 
strange condition of man in which those noble 
moral faculties are in a state of ‘‘ bondage 
under sin.’ It finds this sad fa&t when it 
comes. It appears in order to introduce a new 
remedial system that throws its benign light 
over all the questions that affeét our moral 
well-being. All things are newly seen. They 
are differently arranged from what they other- 
wise would have been. God’s Providence and 
God’s Grace work together. The redemptive 

system, which is always in the mind of God, 


155 


156 Divine Providence 


and so is always used by Him in his provi- 
dential dealings with mankind, must be in our 
mind as well and be used by us, if we would 
have any tolerable success and satisfaction in 
our study of providence. No other explana- 
tion goes so far towards ‘‘ gathering in and 
accommodating itself to the facts.’’ 

Look, first of all, at the primal state of his- 
toric man. Let us dismiss, now and here, as 
irrelevant any reference to a period claimed 
by some when ‘‘man was evolving from his 
fur and getting on his intellect.’ Let us take 
man at the earliest historic point where we 
find him as a moral being —capable of recog- 
nizing aright or a wrong in any one act or 
thought. ‘There are in him precisely the 
human powers, not one more and not one less, 
which he has now. It is not necessary that 
we take him where he is educated up to be- 
come an accurate judge of what particular 
things are right or are wrong; the point is that 
He judges at all by a moral standard, Hehas 
faculty for high moral conduct when he is in 
his earliest historic state. He has stronger but 
no additional faculties at the present hour.* 


* “When we speak of primitive man, we do not mean man 
while he was emerging from brutality to humanity. We leave 
that to the few biologists who, undeterred by the absence of facts, 
still profess a belief in the descent of man from some known or 
unknown animal species. The more savage a tribe, the more 
accurately it was supposed to reflect the primitive state of man- 
kind. Now we know that savage and primitive are very far 
from meaning the same thing.” Max Miiller. Similarly, Tyler, 
Dawson, and Duke of Argyle. 


Providence in Redemptive Sorrow 157 


He never was a higher and never was a lower 
being in moral grade. ‘These powers were his 
original moral outfit, and were exhibited by 
man in his earliest history. ‘The songs of all 
the old centuries, founded on universal tradi- 
tion, sing of that ‘‘ primal golden avenswATt 
was the study of the original instinés and 
aspirations in our human nature that led 
Rousseau and his school of French thinkers 
into their philosophy of ‘the original good- 
ness and perfectibility of man.’’? ‘They called | 
their doctrine ‘‘humanism.”’ ‘They Onivay 
adopted the older philosophy of Plautinus who, 
when dying, said, ‘‘I am struggling to liberate 
the divinity within me.’’ ‘This is, indeed, a 
somewhat erroneous form of a great fact which 
Christianity endorses and explains. In accept- 
ing the Scriptural account of a primal state 
depicted in Genesis asa ‘‘ Garden of Eden,” 
with man as its innocent dweller, we find his- 
toric basis for belief in primitive righteousness. 

But this primal state by no means explains 
all the facts. Rousseau and his school have 
been succeeded by a school as distinétly pes- 
simistic as its predecessors were optimistic. 
The sad facts of mistake and sin, of human , 
greed and selfishness, of war and pestilence, 
of human suffering in its thousand forms, 
claimed later attention; and the modern school 
gives such emphasis to them, that the primal 
state of man’s innocence is forgotten. One of 


158 | Divine Providence 


the newer theories is that the race is in proc- 
ess of clearing itself of original animalism, 
and is ‘‘letting the ape and tiger die.’’ But 
ape and tiger die hard, since they reappear in 
every human child, and are, in any age, not 
less strong. Itis more than a Christianized 
civilization can do to hold them in check by 
moral considerations—as witness recent wars. 
And as to those ‘‘egoistic impulses’’ which 
some social philosophers call ‘‘man’s chief 
sin,’’ these are still to be found in every child 
of Adam. New influences have to be intro- 
duced to make him think of ‘‘ the other man.’’ 
Many do not exactly like the old theological 
terms of ‘‘depravity’’ and ‘‘original sin,”’ 
and yet modern philosophy has to own some- 
thing that differs therefrom only in name. It 
calls it sometimes ‘‘ degeneracy,’’ and speaks of 
some men as ‘‘degenerate.’’ Its phrase is 
‘“ radical evil,’’ and it has much to say of the 
‘brute inheritance’? inman. Its denunciation 
of ‘‘selfishness’’ is insistent. The doctrine 
of an ‘‘evil heredity’? is now universally 
asserted by men who shrink from the old 
theological formulas. ‘‘Adam’s fall’’ is de- 
nied in words, but held in fact by those who 
insist upon ‘‘ inherited tendencies’’ and upon 
‘the solidarity of the race.’’ ‘There are tre- 
mendous facts of ‘‘retrogression,’’ which all 
are compelled to own. And since this tendency 
downward in a being plainly made to tend 


Providence in Redemptive Sorrow 159 


upward, appears in early historic times, and 
is universal in humanity, the indications are 
that at a very early period—as early as the 
first man—this ‘‘ degeneration”? in some way 
begun. And all this points to that which 
Christianity assumes of “original righteous- 
ness,’’ and of original faculty left in man, not- 
withstanding ‘‘ that primal sin’? which is en- 
dorsed by every man as he sins “after the 
similitude of Adam’s transgression.’”’ ‘Take 
either theory, that of the original goodness or 
of the original badness of man alone, and a 
vast number of facts are unexplained. Any 
theory between the two raises more difficulties 
than it explains. The twofold fa@ recognized 
of the primitive sinlessness and the quick com- 
ing of sinfulness, and we get a comprehen- 
sion of facts in no other way recognized. Only 
on this theory can we account for the most 
ancient belief among the primary nations in 
‘“‘the one God.’”? In some respects the earli- 
est, tho not the fullest, were among the pur- 
est ideas of the Deity.* Only in one Way can 


* “<The sublimer portions of the Egyptian religion are de- 
monstrably ancient. They believed in a single and primeval 
God. It was its later form that was the grossest and most cor- 
rupt.”” “‘ Hibbert Zectures,” p. gi. ‘Behind the Homeric Poems,”’ 
says Fairbairn, ‘and the Vedas we find the name of one God. 
The result is a theism that we may name individualistic.” 
‘Studies in Religion,” p. 22. Says Ebrard, ‘‘ We have nowhere 
been able to discover the least traces of any forward and up- 
ward movement from Fetishism to Polytheism, and from that 
again toa gradually advancing knowledge of the one God; but 
on the contrary a decided tendency to sink from an earlier and 


160 Divine Providence 


we account for the declension from these prim- 
itive beliefs. ‘The original members of the 
human race preserved their moral faculties, 
but went astray through wrong feeling and 
ac&t somehow introduced into the human race, 
and these declensions led downwards to poly- 
theism. And this lower view of God made 
righteousness less rightful and sin less wrong- 
ful; and so these two great facts became less 
forceful as an explanation in part of the Divine 
Providence toward men. Any view that 
lessens the sinfulness of sin is suspicious. Sin 
is not unripe goodness. It is of another moral 
quality. As Dorner says, “‘ Sin is not being 
imperfect at all, but the contravention of what 
ought to be.’’? And the two-fold fact gets it- 
self reflected in the consciousness of every 
man; so that he finds two forces, like two 
laws, at work in his being, and he seems some- 
times to himself to be two men. There is a 
‘Jaw working in his members against the law of 
sin and death.’’ And such a man looking out 
of himself sees about him providences which he 
is strongly inclined to interpret according to 
his own inward sense of deserved approval or 
condemnation by his God. 

But there is one other fact more important 
than the two just named—that of redemption 


relatively purer knowledge of God.’”’ Ch. Apol. And elsewhere 
he speaks of ‘‘a primitive monotheism, or, as we might call it, 
Elohism.” Similarly, ‘‘ Early Prevalence of Monotheistic Be-, 
liefs,’’ Rawlinson; and Ebers in ‘‘ Uarda.”’ 


Providence in Redemptive Sorrow 161 


as affecting daily providences toward us. In 
one very just way of conceiving of it, the 
redemption in Christ, in its developed appli- 
cation to man, is itself a providential arrange- 
ment. A thought of God at all, it is 
obviously his leading thought. 

The mere coming of the Only Begotten Son 
is significant. The race is not treated as if 
moral orphans. ‘The hope, and prayer, and 
expectation of foremost souls in the moral his- 
tory of the world is granted them in this 
Divine gift. The ideal becomes the actual 
man. Assembling in one all the single vir- 
tues that each of the noblest souls had exem- 
plified, He stands forth the one example of 
perfect moral law perfe@ly kept, so that He 
alone can rise in the audience of the world and 
say, “‘ Which of you conviéteth Me of sin?’? 
The Scriptures teach the fatherhood of Adam, 
and so the brotherhood of mankind, and Jesus 
is not only one with us, but one of us in this 
human brotherhood. ‘The Scriptures teach 
also the Fatherhood of God, and the brother- 
hood of all who are “children of God by faith 
ielesticn Christ’? “And in this redeemed 
brotherhood is the Redeemer Himself as the 
Eider Brother of each member of the household 
of faith. 

This coming of Jesus sheds a new radiance 
over all the providences of God. God is not 
only the Sovereign rewarding sooner or later 


162 Divine Provioence 


the right and punishing the wrong, but He is 
a God with a heart, and His heart must mani- 
fest itself in His providential dealings. True, 
aside from this sending of Christ, on the gen- 
eral principles of universal goodness, we might 
believe that He would do the best possible in 
favoring all who do the right, and, also that 
He would make every possible allowance to- 
ward the wrong-doer, softening, as far as pos- 
sible, every penalty. But this act of giving for 
us the Only Begotten puts all else in a new 
light. It is not the same world seen in this 
new atmosphere. Infinite compassion is added 
to other infinite perfections. Now, it is 
proved that He does not “willingly afflict the 
children of men.’’ ‘There is unspeakable sor- 
row in the world. And there are times when 
the man endowed with the utmost of natural 
hopefulness, has hard work to keep up under his 
own trials and under that most oppressive sense 
of the evils that burden our common humanity. 
We must have some one greater than ourselves 
nearby on whom to lean. For there are trou- 
bles that would drive men to the recklessness 
of utter despair. ‘The losses, the afflictions, 
the disappointments, the humiliations so cruel, 
the anguish almost intolerable that have to be 
borne sometimes in silence—how all these ap- 
peal to the heart of God. He is at blame for 
none of these things. All of them come from 
the sad abuse rather than the happy use of the 


Providence in Redemptive Sorrow 163 


powers God has given us. These things have 
to be allowed in His universe if He allows man 
to be free. And who would not prefer to be 
great enough in the scale of being to be free 
rather than low enough to be without moral 
and intelligent will? But all this anguish 
moves the Infinite pity and give us the opportu- 
nity to see the Divine tenderness toward us in 
the gift of that Christ who has been called 


“Vhe Heart of God.’?- And if He could do y 


nothing for us by way of redemption, it would 
be something could we know that He has the 
heart to helpus. Italready relieves somewhat 
of the strain, it helps to make the burden a 
little less heavy to know that God is actually 
dealing with us. For God does not send an 
angel, who could have taught us if mere teach- 
ing were all that was needed; but Jesus is 
“The Son of God.’’ ‘To teaching so lofty and 
authoritative, and to example so perfe¢t—and 
both these are in some subsidiary sense re- 
demptive and preparatory—He comes to add 
a distinctive mission of salvation. 

But the thing that concerns us in this discus- 
sion is that one great element in that mission is 
suffering. On ordinary principles of justice \ 
He ought not to have suffered. Is this the way 
God treats perfect obedience? Is the lesson of 
Christ to the world this, that the holier one is 
the greater sufferer he will be? ‘That would, 
indeed, be the sad lesson for us, thus introdu- 


164 Divine Providence 


cing the greatest of all possible perplexities and 
overturning all conceptions of justice, if Jesus 
were not a voluntary sufferer in behalf of others, 
‘bearing our sins in His own body on the 
treet! 

Is redemption by the holy suffering of a holy 
sufferer the keynote of all God’s dealings? 
If so, then vicarious sorrow is the noblest con- 
ception of sorrow possible. And sorrow of man 
that hasany holy element in it ceases to be mere 
sorrow by being lifted into a higher plane, and 
by it one may become Christlike just so far as 
it is borne with Him for others’ good. He is 
the one perfect example of it, taking in all its 
various elements. And so the element of sub- 
missive and obedient sorrow, under the Divine 
hand, endured for others’ welfare, brings us on 
into the solemn, happy mystery, in which we 
taste the mingled cup given to us to drink 
with our Savior, and Master, and Lord. Re- 
demption by a suffering Savior is the great ex- 
planation of sorrow; the new Gospel way of 
using of sorrow which all alone is sin’s curse, 
but which in the high chemistry of God’s grace 
becomes sin’s cure. Sin itself is discord. 
But the cross of our Lord takgs up that discord 
and resolves it into concord. Says another, 
“Sin jin itself is an infringement on God’s 
order. It disintegrates, decomposes, reduces 
to ashes. It isa defacement and a destruction 
passing over the life of man. It is like an 


Providence in Redemptive Sorrow 165 


earthquake overturning a city; like a fire re- 
ducing a forest to ashes.’’? Only by some vast 
potency can the earthquake and the fire be 
made to give room for more life and beauty 
than had before been possible; giving opportu- 
nity, such as never else could be furnished, for 
the most momentous reversal of all this primi- 
tive sorrow. It is possible to use holy sorrow 
as atonement and restoration. Therecomesto 
be a singular beauty, and then a singular 
moral worth in the suffering of the Lord, 
going, as it does, to the depth of all suffering, 
and changing, as it does, pain to joy and 
shame to glory. 

And the principle of glory through sorrow is 
not confined to religion—except as religion so 
illuminates nature and is illuminated thereby 
that each helps to explain the other. ‘There 
is no atonement in nature, but there is a 
strange correlation therewith in the vegetable 
world, in which weakness and something that 
suggests pain give opportunity for the highest 
forms of beauty. If God had the world’s 
redemption always in mind, is it strange 
that there are glorious suggestions of the 
Divine thought in nature? If man was to see 
the glory of suffering in Christ’s cross and to 
see God’s own heart laid bare in ‘‘ atonement 
through suffering,’’ is it strange if we find 
premonitions abounding in man’s physical 
environment ? There are those who with anoint- 


166 Divine Providence 


ed eye see tokens in all nature of man’s re- 
demption through suffering. The mingled 
glory and pain of Christ’s atoning sorrow are 
reflected in the bloom of every plant and 
shrub. For bloom, so some naturalists claim, 
is due to weakness and wounding at the point 
where the flower appears. Every flower, they 
say, is a hurt thing; every blossom a hint of 
sorrow and death. Says another: ‘‘ The flower 
and the fruit come from the axil of leaf and 
stem—from the joint in the armor of the 
plant, which is equivalent to a wound in the 
side—or else at the top of the stem, where the 
vital force is feeblest. It is the dying plant 
that flowers and fruits. When winter’s storm 
or stmmer’s wind will not force apart one of 
these armor-joints, then nature with her own 
hand inflictsthe wound. . . . . All beau- 
tiful things in nature are set to the same key- 
note of sorrow, suffering, and death; and their 
beauty is developed through imperfection and 
decay. ‘To the ruin and abrasion of its shores 
the Mediterranean Sea owes the lovely blue of 
its waters. And the bright azure of the sum- 
mer skies is caused in large measure by the 
diffusion through them of the dust of life.’’* 
And here we get a glimpse, it may be, of the 
reason why God allows the wounding of some 
of the select souls he loves so well. The 
greatest mystery in Providence, so far as we 


* McMillan, ‘‘ The Olive Leaf.” 


Providence in Redemptive Sorrow 167 


know it, is God’s dealings with these noblest 
men. It is all right that the wicked should 
suffer. Judas goes fitly to ‘‘ his own place,”’ 
and Jesus writes his epitaph: ‘‘Good were it for 
that man if he had not been born.’”? ‘That 
class of facts does not trouble us. We see the 
reason for them. But here is the trouble. 
Jesus Christ on a cross of suffering! And all 
through the ages the sweetest, gentlest, 
purest souls—souls with least sin, souls not 
needing, for their own good, more purifying— 
these souls dealt with strangely in God’s 
Providence. They have to suffer often the 
most keenly of any, since they are the most 
sensitive to sorrow, and yet least deserving of 
it. Is there a key to it all in the vicarious 
suffering endured by our Lord ? Is the wound- 
ing of Christ—He wounded for others’ good— 
the explanation not only of His sorrows, but, 
in a measure, of theirs as well? And are 
there hints of all this in the wounded plant 
that blossoms when and where it is hurt, in 
the pearl of the oyster formed only when the 
creature has been injured and has suffered long 
months of agony, in the ashes of the old 
vegetations the results of millions of years of 
burnings and grindings and crushings, until it 
is the fit soil for the flowers and fruits that 
gladden the heart of man? ‘These are man’s 
surroundings ; are they intended to have re- 
demptive suggestions as well? Ifso, then the 


168 Divine Providence 


lesson of the cross is reflected in all the world 
where Jesus died. And it may do not a little 
in explaining providences when we see that we 
also are sometimes ‘‘bruised for others’ 
iniquities,’? and are suffering ‘“‘to make up 
that which is behindhand in the suffering of 
the Lord’’—we, by our patience and sweetness 
in trial and tender helpfulness of others, 
showing them how a Christian can suffer 
under the will of God. A plant may need 
but one more thing to change it from a flower- 
less to a flowering plant. And a man may 
lack but the one grace, gained only by suffer- 
ing, to be fruitful and beautiful in the Chris- 
tian life. All grand music has somewhere in 
it a few minor chords; all songs have an ele- 
ment of sorrow. And all lives that have 
depth and breadth of rootage, strength of fiber, 
and beauty of flowering, have had in them a 
sanctified sorrow. It is the triumph of tri- 
umphs that sorrow, starting in sin, can be 
made holy and thus rescued from sin’s grasp; 
that grief, the dark shadow of evil, can be so 
changed that in the end it shall bring a deep 
and rich and sustained consolation and even 
an abiding joyfulness. ‘‘ For the joy set be- 
fore Him, He endured the cross.”’ 


XI 


THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF 
PROVIDENCE 


A HAPPy apostle of Christianity uses these 
words: ‘‘ Now the God of hope fill you with 
all joy and peace in believing, that ye may 
abound in hope.’’* No other religion can 
watrant such hopeful words as these. No 
other religion has at its head a God of both 
the physical world and the moral world—a 
God who can make the two correspond; a God 
revealed as a God of grace in giving his Son 
and at the same time a God of providence 
managing the life of the world and the life of 
the individual as well. 

A brief outlook on the world’s great re- 
ligions will show the amazing advantage of 
the Christian view of God and His world. 

Confucianism may be put out of the list. 
The ethical belief of millions, it is not in itself 
areligion. It does not expressly deny a God; 
but it does the next thing to it—it ignores 
Him. Its highest duty is ancestral worship. 
Its precepts are socialistically moral. Provi- 
dence can have have no place in its scheme of 
life.t 


* Romans, xv:14. 
} Menzies, ‘‘ History of Religion,” p. 116, 


169 


170 Divine Providence 


Zoroastrianism, the dual faith, is one of the 
oldest of the ancient religions. It pushed aside 
the older Vedic belief in the one God who was 
to be worshiped in a kind of nature worship. 
Beautiful hymns and prayers had been com- 
posed, but everything was on the natural 
plane. God was recognized, in those fine old 
Vedic songs, as manifested in His natural 
works; in sun, and moon, and stars, in seasons 
with their harvests or their drouths, in all 
this physical frame of things. Thanks were 
given for material blessings, and supplications 
were offered for their continuance. Sorrow 
and death were to be kept out of sight. Sad 
things were to be borne as well as possible, 
and little must be said about them. ‘This was 
the simple faith that Zoroaster supplanted 
with his dualism.* In one way this was a 
decline; in another it was an advance. The 
simpler faith had not taken in the great mass 
of sad facts. It was felt that these also de- 
manded some religious explanation. Hence 


* Menzies in his ‘‘ History of Religion,” discussing the origin 
of religion, dismisses ‘‘ nature-worship”’ as claimed by Révelle, 
and “ fetish-worship,”’ as set forth by Comte, and “ Animism,” 
i. e., worship of spirits, as described by Tylor, and also “ ghost 
worship,” as presented by Spencer, and inclines strongly to 
‘the original belief in a Supreme Being.’? He seems to deter- 
mine the question largely by showing that the oldest his- 
toric worship of India is that of the Vedic religion, which he 
sets down at as early a date as 1300, B.C., and which he de- 
scribes as ‘“‘a bright and happy system in which the primitive 
beliefs of mankind are to be seen.’’—History of Religion,”’ pp. 
32 and 331. \ 


The Christian Theory of Providence 171 


the invention of two nearly equal divinities— 
Ormuzd, the good spirit, and Ahriman, the 
evil spirit. To these were ascribed opposite 
workings; the one inspiring men to all right- 
eousness, the other to all wickedness. On the 
surface this double theory seems to account 
for some facts. But, pushed back a little, it 
breaks down; and the new difficulties are 
harder to meet than those it evidently is in- 
vented to explain. It has half of a place fora 
Divine Providence in theory; but this, in fact 
and in feeling, amounts to little or nothing. 
To a pessimistic man, it gives the miserable 
consolation of appearing to account for some 
sad facts, by the saddest possible of all facts. 
For an optimistic man, it leaves always a 
suspicion that he is not taking into account a 
whole mass of antagonistic facts found in 
actual life; and that his good god may not 
succeed in the final outcome of the universe, 
nor in any considerable number of providences 
on the way to that doubtful result. 

Buddhism, the religion of Asiatic millions, 
has no place for a benign providence. It has 
two great words as its expression. ‘They are 
‘‘Karma’’ or ‘‘ Nirvana.’’ ‘‘ Karma’’ is sub- 
stantially the stream of flowing existence com- 
ing here and there into personal conscious- 
ness, as the bubble comes to be a bubble on 
the surface of the river of which it is itself a 
part. So that it is the sum of ‘‘ good or evil 


172 Divine Providence 


done’’ in previous states, in the present state, 
and in the future states of being. Personal 
existence is painful, and so a source of evil— 
thus exactly reversing the Christian idea that 
evil is the source of pain. Personal life is in- 
herently miserable. One must try to escape 
from it inte ‘‘ Nirvana.’’ ‘This ‘‘ Nirvana,”’ 
the exact meaning of which has been so much 
discussed, is now understood to be ‘‘ extirpa- 
tion of personal desire* and so escape from 
the strife inherent in personal existence.’’} 
This is to be accomplished by renunciation of 
personal wish, and consists of rest from the 
strife of individualliving.| ‘The system makes 
“'Karma’’the real, god. .° But’ “‘ Karniay ae 
an impersonal law. And while ‘‘ Nirvana ”’ 
admits of the idea of a moral order in its pre- 
ceding ‘‘ Karma,’’ it has no possible place for 
the administration of a denign personal provi- 
dence. ‘The system as to present pain, hasa 
soothing fatalistic effect. One can not escape 
and might as well submit. In this narcotic 
way, it makes pain easier to be borne. Its 
virtue is that of a dumb animal. And the 
whole system in its outcome is widely unlike 
that of the Gospel of Christ. No such hope- 
ful words, either about the universe as a 


* The alleged words of Gautama on attaining Buddhahood 
were, “ I have attained to the extinction of all desire.” 

+ See Rhys David's ‘‘ Hibbert Lectures,” pages 21 and to1as 
authority for the above condensed statement. 

t See Bruce, ‘‘ The Moral Order,”’’ p. 19. 


The Christian Theory of Providence 173 


whole, or the personal experience of any 
human soul, could be written in any Buddhistic 
book as that quoted from Paul at the opening 
of this chapter. Its outcome is dumbly fatal- 
istic rather than hopefully Christian. It 
has no conception of a God of grace, or a God 
of providence. It has no place for the union 
of these two ideas, such as is found in the ac- 
tual God of our Christianity. 

In sharp distinction from the Buddhistic be- 
lief of Asia was the older Egyptian faith in 
the one God. ‘The battle is still raging as to 
the primitive faith of that marvelous people. 
Proofs of belief in the one God are offered in 
all confidence. But, with equal confidence, 
the evidences of polytheism are presented.* 
Probably, in the earliest historic time, both 
faiths were held; the one in the more philo- 
sophic mind, and the other in the common 
thought; the latter easily took the symbols of 
beast and bird, under which the qualities of 
the one God were usually presented, to be the 
real gods. Hence the probable rise of poly- 
theism. What the philosophers taught came 
soon among themselves to bea kind of panthe- 
ism in feeling, if not in formal expression; the 
idea of the Divine immanence carried out apart 
from the Divine transcendence. This ad- 


* On the one side may be mentioned Renouf ‘‘ Hibbert Lec- 
tures,’ Rougé, Mariette, and Brugsch; and on the other Maspero, 
Tiele, and Meyer, and Ebers. Menzies holds the two beliefs to 
have been parallel. 


174. Divine Providence 


mitted a certain limited idea of providence, 
precisely as did the puerilities of the common 
people. But the Egyptian cast of thinking 
was solemn, there was a profound faith in the 
immortality of the soul; but it took on physical 
explanations, leading to great concern for the 
bodies of the dead. So that Egypt cared 
more for her tombs than for her temples. 
The shadow of death was over all men, from 
prince to peasant. To have royal sepulchre 
when dead was more than to have royal pal- 
ace when living. ‘There was constantly the 
shadow of sin, and no atonement for it was 
known; hence, it must be ‘‘ suffered out’’ in 
this world or the next; and any providence 
that their gloomy faith allowed was solely the 
Divine concern to see that the penalty fell cer- 
tainly and justly on each man. It was only 
the grim faith of desert, and it was very far 
from the Christian hopefulness of apostle and 
confessor. 

It is across the width of many centuries 
that we must go from the Egyptian beliefs to 
those of Greece and Rome. And yet Plato 
learned philosophy, in those subsequent cen- 
turies, from Heliopolis on the Nile. But Ath- 
enian thought so stamped all it borrowed, that 
men seeing the exquisite beauty of the mint- 
ing, forgot to ask where all this gold was 
mined. ‘he high morality of the Greek tra- 
gedians has been justly praised. And yet it is 


Che Christian Theory of Providence 175 


clear that their Nemesis was the goddess of 
chastisement and even of vengeance. It was, 
instead of blended fear and love, the religion 
of fear only. ‘There was retributory but not 
redemptive sorrow. Its sense of justice was 
often exceedingly strong. But it was without 
hope of any forgiveness. It had no ‘‘ adoption 
as sons’’ into the filial relation toward God. 

Even the Hebrew faith, despite the Mosaic 
summary which made the first table of the 
law, ‘‘ Thou shalt Jove,’? dwelt too exclu- 
Sively upon the retributive aspect of the 
Divine Providence. It was the spirit of those 
times. And this side of the truth was perpetu- 
ated in the middle ages of Christianity, as 
we see in the pictures and statuary of those 
centuries. Hebrew methods of interpreting 
' Scripture and providence survived even down 
to the years of Protestant Puritanism. 

And here there must be some reference 
to the mistaken conceptions as to Satanic 
power so prevalent among many good men of 
the past, and even in the present generation. 
An unconscious Zoroastrianism—or double 
theory of God—is held about this matter of 
Providence. Good men sometimes speak as if 
the forces of the world could be sharply divided 
into providential and Satanic; and asif what is 
ascribed to the one agency is so much sub- 
tracted from the other. There would, indeed, 
seem to be no honest and reverent way of 


176 Divine Providence 


treating the Scriptures that is consistent with 
denying Satanic agency. Even in the prayer 
put into the lips of the disciples, our Lord 
taught them to pray to be delivered ‘‘ from the 
Evil One.’’? Such an evil personage does more 
than Bruce claims, when he says, that ‘‘ he flits 
through the sacred story.” But when named 
in Scripture he is far removed from the Zoro- 
astrian god of evil. Recognized, as in 
soe sense, at the head of the antagonism to 
goodness, he is seen a few times, as in the 
‘poetic form in which the life of Job is record- 
ed, as receiving especial power for doing harm. 
But in the prose statements of the Bible there 
is no such natural and inevitable rulership 
over events as that which is mistakenly 
ascribed to him, even by good men, occasion- 
ally, to-day. On the one hand he is not 
to be idealized out of existence, and on the 
other he is not to be made ‘‘a secondary god.” 
No matter how strong, he is a created though 
fallen being; and he is allowed to do his work 
for a time, that the Divine overruling in 
Providence and Gospel may outwork him. 
‘For this purpose the Son of God was manifest 
that he might destroy the works of the devil.”’ 
But the too frequent conception of Satanic 
agency is that men are released, in a measure, 
from responsibility and driven on into wick- 
edness in spite of all their efforts, by a malign 
spiritual power. And since life is profoundly 


Che Christian Theory of Providence 177 


affected by environment, Satan is mistakenly 
thought to manage in the evil things of the 
world, even as God manages in the sphere of 
good things. But if God’s Providence man- 
ages only in the sphere of good things, then, 
since there is nothing on earth not affected by 
sin, there is no effectual management of God 
at all. God excluded save only where there 
is no evil, is not God anywhere on earth. 
God’s providential management of evil is a » 
conspicuous department of Divine Providence, 
and one might almost say that He has scarcely 
need to manage where good alone is found. 
God is a Spirit. Even in managing external 
Providences, His ends are those of the immortal 
spirit He has put within us. In most of these 
wrong. conceptions the mistake comes from 
looking upon Providence as mainly con- 
cerned in material things, in physical occur- 
rences. The error is in making the outward- 
ness SO prominent; whereas outwardness is 
but an incident ministering to the zzwardness 
which it is God’s object to secure. 

It is a hard thing to justify God’s providen- 
tial dealings with the human race apart from 
those inward and spiritual ends at which God 
is aiming as shown by Christianity. Even 
the moral view, aside from the specially 
Christian view, is only with great difficulty to 
be maintained. When Mr. Mill says that 
‘“‘the problem of reconciling infinite benevo- 


178 Divine Providence 


lence and justice in the Creator of such a 
world as this is impossible,’’ we admit it at 
once—aside from moral ends; and we might 
admit its ‘‘impossibility’’ aside from those 
moral ends as interpreted by Christianity with 
its redemptive plan. That plan furnishes 
men with‘a probation in which just desert is 
suspended that they may seize the opportun- 
ity for escaping alike from the penalty and 
the dominion of sin. Any other view must 
be faulty by not recognizing the main fact of 
Christianity, and superficial by not recognizing 
the real inwardness of things. ‘The supernat- 
ural, in its Christian form, with its Christian 
attestations, must necessarily affect all our ideas 
of providence. A bare theism will not suffice. 
We can not retreat from the fulness of our 
Christian light shining in the inner fane, to 
livein any outerdimness. Says Caird: “‘ You 
can not as a Christian simply hold in common 
with Deists, and Jews, and Mohammedans, the 
doctrines of natural religion, while you‘add to 
them certain other doctrines peculiar to Chris- 
tianity. For Christianity transforms, elevates, 
and works a change in all previous materials 
of religious knowledge.’’* Let no man talk of 
going down into the well to use starlight when 
he has the sunshine of midday. 

And this light comes from the conception of 
God asa Father. A man may be a man and 

* ‘* Gifford Lectures,’’ page 99. 


Che Christian Theory of Providence 179 


not a father. And we can conceive of a God, 
truly such, who is not a Father. God becomes 
‘the Father,’’ by virtue of being the Father 
of his ‘‘Only Begotten Son’’ Jesus Christ. 
All sonship that we as men can ever have 
comes not from our natural descent from God 
—there was one ‘‘Only Begotten Son,” our 
Lord Jesus Christ—but our sonship stands 
in receiving the ‘‘adoption of sons.’? Our 
capacity for adoption comes to be an actuality 
as we receive His Spirit and become ‘‘ children 
of God by our faith in Jesus Christ.” Jesus 
Christ stands forth alike by His claims and by 
virtue of the whole idea of a Christ, in a 
unique position, as well as in a unique person- 
ality. 
““If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of man 

Mere man, the first and best, but nothing more— 

Account Him for reward of what He was, 

Now and forever, wretchedest of alls 

For see; Himself conceived of life as love; 

Conceived of love as what must enter in, 

Fill up, make one with Him, each soui He loved. 

Can a mere man do this? 

Yet Christ saith this He lived and died to do; 

Call Christ then the Illimitable God.” 

—Browning, ‘‘A Death in the Desert.” 


And Christ’s miracles, howsoever sorted, 
fall into miracles of tender personal care for 
men in daily want. Not one was a mere 
freak of power. Not one was a wonder for 
the wonder’s sake. A poor blind man crying 


180 Divine Providence 


to be healed; a crowd away from home and 
determined to tarry longer that they might 
hear Him, and their hunger making dumb 
appeal to His compassion; a parent in agony for 
his sick child—such were the occasions for the 
working of miracles which showed to men the 
Divine nearness and helpfulness. The teaching 
is that God cares; that God is at hand; that God 
would ward off the sorrows of men which come 
from our state of ‘‘unnature.’? ‘These mira- 
cles are a momentary restoration of the origi- 
nal moral order. ‘They give hint of what a 
normal moral state would have been. They 
are a glimpse—a glimpse only—of a Divine res- 
toration always longed for by the Father, but 
constantly hindered by man’s constant sin. 
They show how Providence would always 
break out in happy miracle of restoration, if 
that could be done in any Divine consistency 
with the needful abhorrence of the evil of the 
world. They show a constant providential 
and gracious kindliness on the part of “‘the 
Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”’ 
All that such a God can do in providence for 
men so dear to Him, will be done, as He seeks 
their spiritual welfare. We must see provi- 
dences as through God’s eye—the God of the 
heart that could send to us, at infinite self 
sacrifice, His only son. One must see the 
world of providence not in the cold midnight 
of a merely naturalistic belief, nor yet when 


The Christian Theory of Providence 181 


mere theism flecks the morning twilight. He 
must stand out at midday in the sunshine of 
the Christian faith. 
As Browning sings: 
‘‘T say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ, 


Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it.” 


Life is illuminated, as well as exalted. 
Christ’s words have fresh emphasis as He says 
to us anew, ‘‘ Ye believe in God; believe 
alsoin Me.’’ In the carking cares of a weary 
life we are sometimes tempted to yield to dis- 
couragement. We are lonely. Fear for the 
hour overcomes faith. But allthis is reversed; 
and victory comes, as we remember that won- 
derful sympathy shown by Jesus when He was 
with us—a sympathy just as strong to-day. 


‘« Just as Iam, this earth He trod 
With every human ill save sin; 
And though indeed the Mighty God, 
As I am now so He hath been.” 


Thus, His miracles bid us not indeed to ex- 
pect their repetition, since He who wrought 
them has gone; but they help us to feel that 
God is near in His providential dealing with 
men. And the great moral miracle at Geth- 
semane, when He prayed, ‘‘Let this cup pass; 
nevertheless Thy will be done,’’ has helped 
unnumbered millions in the sad hours through 
which the Lord’s followers have had to pass. 


182 Divine Providence 


On the cross His prayer for His murderers has 
made confessors and martyrs not only brave 
to suffer with Him, but able also to forgive 
their persecutors. He opened wide the doors 
of the other world. He came out from that 
world into this at His human birth. He 
went back into that world from this, when He 
died. He returned to us at His resurrection. 
He resumed His native heaven at His ascen- 
sion. And this frequent passage through the 
open door, showing acquaintance with both 
worlds, has made His promise to dying be- 
lievers exceeding comforting, as they hear 
Him say, ‘‘I will come again and receive you 
unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be 
also.”? And when, in God’s Providence, our 
holy dead are to be laid away, we bury them 
not so much in the earth as in the promises of 
their Savior and ours. Christianity is, then, 
for us, living or dying, the religion of hope. 
‘“‘All things are yours, whether it be life or 
death. All things work together for good to 
them that love God.’’ 


“I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I can not drift 
Beyond His love and care.’’ 


XII 


THE INTERPRETATION OF 
PROVIDENCE 


VERY great discredit among thinking peo- 
ple has been brought upon the whole idea of 
a Divine Providence by unreasonable, rash, 
fantastic and even grotesque interpretations of 
the events of nature and of human life. In 
the reaction against these interpretations some 
have allowed themselves to SOrsomtaiwas.: to 
deny either that such a Providence exists, or 
that, if Providence be granted as a doctrine, 
any interpretation except that given by in- 
spired prophet or apostle is of any value. 

Obviously caution is needed in both direc- 
tions. 

I. See Providence as related to external 
things. One realm—one realm only, of prov- 
idential working, has respect to the material 
world. That God should neglect to use physic- 
al things in part, in these providential deal- 
ings, is incredible. And yet more mistakes 
are made just here, along the line of the 
mainly and even of the exclusively outward 
interpretation, than in all other directions. If 
God had only physical things in His manage- 
ment, and if His ends instead of moral were 

183 


184 Divine Providence 


only physical, if intent only on making it well 
for the good and bad for the evil in material 
things, it would be another matter. Indeed, 
in that case there would be no difficulty at all. 
The good man would always have good health, 
a good farm or a good business, a good for- 
tune, good friends, good environment, and 
there be no lack of any good thing in all his 
happy life. On the other hand, the bad man 
would have none of these. He would have 
no sticcess in any direction. He would have 
a badly organized body, bad health, bad for- 
tune in any undertaking; he would lose his 
friends, and calamity upon calamity would 
gather about his sorrowful way. And this, 
some would say, would be providential deal- 
ing. But so far from that in such a case, were 
it possible, there would be no Divine Provi- 
dence atall. Made primary, these things would 
not be providential. For the moral ends 
are the only ends ultimately in view in the 
providential plans of a moral God. Physical 
things have incidental but not primary mean- 
ings. Providence including, indeed, physical _ 
things, does not work on the merely natu- 
ralistic plane or even on the theistic plane, but 
upon the Christian plane of ends to be sought. 

Take the matter of physical suffering. Pain 
of body is certainly related to sin of soul. 
But it by no means. follows that we can always 
trace a distingt relation between individual sin 


Che Interpretation of Providence 185 


and external calamity. The penalty may be 
bodily at first and only spiritual in the future; 
or it may be spiritual at the outset and the bod- 
ily calamity may be deferred for atime. Be- 
cause pain follows sin as shadow follows sub- 
stance, it does not follow that the shadow 
always falls on the same object, or is always of 
the same length and depth. the sun may be 
vertical. The sinful soul may be punished by 
being left to sin the more; left to ‘‘fill up the 
measure.’’ In one word, the penalty may be 
wholly, for the time, an inward rather than 
outward thing. ' 

2. A vast number of penalties and rewards 
may need to be held back in order that final 
moral ends may be better secured. ‘The re- 
treat of a detachment in battle may be as 
needful as the advance of the rest of the army, 
in gaining the ultimate viCtory. And when 
we consider the fact of a Gospel probation in 
which penal results are held off for a time, to 
give opportunity for retrieving errors and 
securing forgiveness of sins and for achieving 
new moral character, we can see why both pen- 
alty and reward are deferred; and why also 
sometimes physical and sometimes spiritual re- 
sults are allowed here and there to have partial, 
but only parital, fruitage. A few scattered seeds 
of moral conduc are permitted to germinate, 
as it were, scantily and by the wayside, so that 
men may be shown that there is to be a great 


186 Divine Providence 


harvest by and by. God can no more forget 
His final ends for the whole world with its 
material and spiritual existencies, than the 
material and spiritual concerns of any single 
man. 

It follows from these considerations, not that 
we can interpret nothing, but that we can not 
interpret everything. A result may not be 
near enough for us to see it as yet. We 
may have to exercise patience. We may 
inquire about ‘‘the near,’’ but we must also 
remember ‘‘the far off’’ in providential 
award. ‘he Providence itself is near, but 
our interpretation may be too short-sighted. 
Let us refer every event to Providence, but be 
cautious in the interpretation we put upon it. 
God is to lead us, not we Him. It is one 
thing to see a providence; it is another thing to 
see its interpretation with just eyes and a fair 
judgment. We must occupy ahigh moral posi- 
tion when we consider and decide. Moral as 
well as intellectual sanity is needful to keep 
men from absurd interpretations. When a 
certain Scottish minister gravely insisted that 
the burning of a particular theater was God’s 
providential judgment on the coldness of the 
church, people smiled, remembering that not 
one of his flock was in the burning building. 
When a great disaster at Paris startled the 
world, some men said it was God’s Providence 
smiting the city because religious teaching had 


Che Interpretation of Providence 187 


been abandoned in the schools. When a good 
man fresh from reading the story of the 
week’s crime in his Saturday night’s paper, 
said, ‘‘ God had let all this crime loose because 
the nation had gone ona gold basis,’’ it was 
clear that a crank rather than a Christian had 
spoken. There are men exceedingly glib at 
their fantastic interpretations of Divine Provi- 
dence who are exceedingly careless about 
keeping the Divine commandments. An 
Apostle praises ‘‘soundness of mind; and 
the interpreter of providences not only needs 
this gift, but needs to use it with great care- 
fulness. 

3. But there is an opposite error. It is pos- 
sible for a man to hold theoretically to Provi- 
dence as a doctrine, and yet in every case that 
can be presented, to bring his demurrer. 
Cite any event whatsoever, any instance 
where even the gates of empire have turned 
upon some single fact, and he will hesitate 
to own the providential character of it. 
He refuses to apply his do¢trine. He holds 
to the theory always, but always denies that 
any specific fact is providential. Better be too 
fantastic than too atheistic; better believe 
something providential, than nothing. It is 
best, however, to seek our method of interpre- 
tation from the Divine Word when we would 
learn how to study Divine Providence to-day. 

We have the prophets of the Scripture, 


188 Divine Providence 


They saw things not only as sharp-witted men 
able to discern the trend of events, but upon 
their native ability to forecast and interpret, 
there was superinduced a Divine inspiration. 
These men were ever asserting a Divine Prov- 
idence over against the idea of divination—the 
idea of all the surrounding nations. God’s 
words, not those of soothsayers, were to be 
consulted. ‘The prophet was not a diviner, but 
a seer. ‘The diviner saw not the least con- 
nection between ‘‘conduct and lot.’’ But 
with the seer conduct was the chief thing in 
bringing a sad or a glad result. Righteous- 
ness never entered into the calculation of the 
soothsayer. It was the ‘‘all in all’’ of the 
prophet. Into the smallest things of result 
the diviner went in his interpretation of 
omens; and into the smallest things he was 
followed by the prophet to point out the hand 
of his God. ‘The soothsayer told of rain and 
sun as coming or going. ‘The prophet claimed 
rain-cloud and sunshine as sent by his Jeho- 
vah. Famine was luck or fate in the diviner’s 
idea. But famine was the frown of Jehovah to 
the prophet. Let it be freely granted that the 
Hebrew mind tended toward an unwarranted 
extreme in these providential interpretations. 
And let it be granted that their inspired 
prophets were, not indeed, erroneous in using 
the language they had rescued from the 
diviner, but were simply so situated that their 


The Mnterpretation of Providence 189 


view was partial. Nor yet had the full light 
of Christianity come to the world. They 
were not wrong in what they saw and said; 
but they saw not the full. truth; took in not 
all the moral meaning of the facts. 

The earlier prophets had reward and pen- 
alty for right or for wrong doing always in 
view; but the emphasis was on the outward re- 
sults. The nation has sinned, and that sin 
was the reason for the national suffering. In- 
stead of the low plane of the diviner there was 
the high plane of the moralist. Right and 
wrong were emphasized by these results. But 
the later prophets saw the defective view of 
their older brethren; and the idea of individu- 
ality in right and in wrong doing came out at 
length. There was more in suffering than 
mere penalty. There wasa ‘‘ Righteous Serv- 
ant’’ suffering gloriously, for others good. 
The redemptive idea was flecking the morning 
hours. But all smaller things stood connected 
with providential aims which were moral aims 
in God’s great plan. There were no trifles, 
‘‘Blossoming fig-trees’’ and ‘‘ herds in the 
stall’’ were things of moral significance. In 
short, all things, little and large, glad and sad, 
were parts of one vast Divine Providence. All 
the prophets did not all the time see the breadth 
of the plan. They interpreted narrowly, and 
from few premises. Some of them came near 
to speaking as if God’s Providence consisted 


190 Divine Provtdence 


of only single and unconnected events that 
were out of any large relation to a grand final 
outcome; a method due partially to their time, 
and not without its suggestion of danger 
for us. ‘They did not decline any interpreta- 
tion at all of Providence; no more did they 
refer all interpretation to the next world. 
God was ‘‘here and now,” in all their proph- 
ecies; and so these were to be interpreted as 
having present and dire meaning for the men 
then living. We are thus forced to say one 
of three things. God was (1) misinterpreted 
in His constant Providence by them; God 
was (2) nearer to the world and dealt differ- 
ently with men in former days; or (3) God is 
as near as ever and is by us to be interpreted 
in His providences. ‘True, His prophets had 
an inspiration we do not possess. But, on the 
other hand, we have their method of interpre- 
tation carefully set down in the Scriptures, 
and the added light of what Jesus said about 
God’s nearness and activity. We are to use 
this knowledge with devout judgment in inter- 
preting providences; these are also all we 
have in interpreting the Scriptures. We must 
judge broadly and wisely, seeing not only the 
‘““near’’ but the ‘‘far off,’ and keeping ever 
in mind God’s final ends, which are always 
moral. 

When we turn to the words of Jesus about 
Providence, we find ourselves in a far more 


The Interpretation of Providence 191 


spiritual atmosphere. Still, as the Jews had 
believed, the good are included in the Divine 
care; but, in the eye of Jesus, so are the evil, 
on whom also the sun shines and the rain falls. 
But these providences, propitious to the one 
class, may be an admonition or a warning to 
the other. When there is the calamity of a , 
falling tower, the lesson is not that men are to 
judge those crushed Galileans greater sinners 
than others; but calamity is to be suggestive 
to His hearers of their doom, if they do not re- 
pent at His preaching. Calamity has, first of 
all, moral meaning; but the God in whose 
hand is both inward and outward recompense 
for sin, may send the outward to us as a kind- 
ly warning against indulgence in wrong-doing; 
so, too, sorrowful providences may come to 
good men to show them that they must, with 
their Lord, ‘‘bear a cross.’’ Sorrow may be . 
allowed to furnish an occasion for us to do 
others good as they witness our Christian 
resignation. The light is set on a hill to be 
seen far and wide. And Christ’s doctrine of 
Providence and His interpretation of it, ex- 
tends to birds and plants, to the gorgeous 
flower, and even to the common grass of the 
field. ‘‘Are not five sparrows sold for two 
farthings and not one of them is forgotten? 
Not one shall fall to the ground without your 
Father.’’ Jesus does not use the term ‘‘spe- 
cial Providence.’’ For had he done so, critics 


192 Divine Providence 


high and low, wise and foolish, might have 
disputed over the meaning of the words. But 
we have something better than the words; we 
have in the quoted verse above the very thing 
itself. 

But these interpretations of Jesus show 
always the moral trend of things. He never 
~ discusses Providence as an intellectual theory 
but as a fact with moral meanings. He sees 
God above and eternity beyond, and the light 
of both falls on all things about Him. The 
sanity and the serenity of His strong and 
broad interpretations make them wholly un- 
like the narrow and naturalistic views of the 
men about Him. 

They tell the story of a certain painter 
whose pictures at first attracted no attention, 
that on going one morning to his work he 
found the snow had broken in the roof of his 
painting-shed, and that his pictures were dis- 
playedinanewlight. He threw away his old 
canvases. He adopted new methods. He 
became a success; and his pictures were 
' thenceforth famous as showing objects seen in 
the light from above. Jesus saw providences 
in the light that streams in upon all events 
from the above and the beyond. 


XITI 


FUTURE PROVIDENTIAL DIS- 
CLOSURES 


But when we have said all that is in our 
power from our present position, in justifica- 
tion of God’s ways with the world and with 
men, there are still difiiculties—difficulties 
purposely left, it may be, for the disclosures 
possible only in the future. 

We must remember two things: 

(I.) That this world has a future. 

CII.) That there is also a future world. 

This world is not finished. It is still in the 
process of the making. GiveGod time. Wait 
for the completion. Meanwhile, as His Provi- 
dence works out His plan, give Him due 
trust. Expectation of something better is 
warranted. If the great poets have sung of a 
‘‘ Paradise Lost’’ and of a ‘‘ Golden Age De- 
parted,’’ they have also sung of a ‘‘ Paradise 
Regained,’’? and a ‘‘ Golden Age Restored.”’ 
A true poet is always more or less of a seer. 
The great songs of the world, true to the facts 
in man’s past and present, have had in thema 
minor strain, sometimes almosta discord. But 
the minor strain and the discord do not end the 
song. They are ‘“‘resolved’’ into a major 

198 


194 Divine Providence 


strain and aricher harmony. ‘The ‘‘ He Was 
Despised,’’ in Handel’s ‘‘ Messiah,’’ ends 
with the ‘‘And He Shall Reign’ of the 
‘¢ Hallelujah Chorus.”’ 

It is the clear duty of men who believe in a 
Divine Providence to mark well and carefully 
consider the world’s advancement not only in 
material welfare, and in those arts that dignify 
and enrich human life, but in the whole 
course and result of human thought. Great 
as has been the world’s progress in material 
things, the advance in the method of human 
thinking has been vastly greater. God has 
not only had events in His control, but the proc- 
esses of human thought have been guided by 
His careful Providence. Over against the 
pessimistic line of thinking in which one sec- 
tion—one section only—of modern scientific 
forecast has indulged, we place unhesitatingly 
the strong optimistic convictions of the better 
philosophic and philanthropic and moralistic 
thinkers from Plato onward, as they insist 
that the trend of human thinking, warranted 
by abundant facts, is toward the belief of a 
better future for the world. God has managed 
not only events, but convictions and expec¢ta- 
tions. ‘here has been, in God’s Providence, 
progress in thought as well as in things. And 
this foretells a better furure. 

Notice the fact that some of the noblest 
social virtues, once scorned, are now praised. 


Future Providential Disclosures 195 


Humility was called the ‘‘ virtue of a whipped 
spaniel.’”’ The very word ‘‘virtue’’ meant 
once “‘the man in his warlike aspect.’’ 
Mercy was weakness two thousand years ago; 
and benevolence was folly. ‘‘’Theotherman”’ 
in his rights and wrongs had no consideration 
except in the writings of a few philosophers 
who themselves speculated rather than prac- 
tised in the moral realm. ‘‘ The emphasis 
placed upon the virtue of courage in early 
times in a military state, and, in times of war, 
in a peaceful State, is transferred in later times 
and in an industrial State to some other 
virtue, such as honesty, which the changed 
conditions call for more imperiously.’’* And 
herein is indication of the rising day for 
humanity. 

So, too, the idea of moral obligation has 
come, in God’s Providence, to be more fully 
applied. The horizon is wider. It means 
more and costs more to be a Christian than 
even a hundred years ago. New enterprises 
have their new claims. Human brotherhood 
has come into larger recognition. Barriers of 
caste and custom are falling. Life is broader 
in its sympathies in all our modern thinking 
and practise. Telegraphs and railways con- 
nect the world’s greater cities. But the mis- 


* Prof. James Seth, ‘“‘ Ethical Principles,” p. 320. In Chap. 
III. of his work, Prof. Seth gives one of the best discussions of 
‘Moral Progress’’ to be found in any modern volume. 


196 Divine Providence 


sionary goes where telegrams do not reach and 
plants schools and churches on the outskirts 
of civilization. ‘The world, smaller for our 
physical appliances, is larger for our moral 
activities. And it is clear that progress in 
these lines is only begun. 

“The discovery of the individual’’ is 
reckoned as among our modern achievements.* 
The ‘‘individual’? had been discovered by 
Jesus. Personality as against the excessive 
nationality of the Jews, had been his insist- 
ence. ‘To one who represented the nation- 
ality and sociality of his times, He had said, 
“Ve must be born again.’’ Any care of His 
for all had been His care for each one of the 
all. But the State—and soon the Church copy- 
ing the State—made the individual the slave of 
both. But we are getting back ‘‘the man’’ 
again. Itis true that on the way to it our 
age is, to use a not uncommon phrase, “‘ organ- 
ized to death’? by our voluntary associa- 
tions. But even this temporary obstruction 
of personality is a vast gain over the medieval 
times. It is coming to be manifest that, from 
the human point of view, State, and Church, 
and all voluntary organizations are chiefly of 
worth for developing ‘‘the man.’’ ‘There are 


* The worship of the gods in every nation of the ancient 
world wasa matter of state, not of individual, concern. It was 
a branch of the public service. Voluntary associations for their 
own spiritual ends were not known among the ancients.— 
Menzies, ‘‘ History of Religions,”’ p. 147. 


Future Providential Disclosures 197 


those that venture to believe that in the 
ages to come it will be manifest that man is 
greater than his institutions; and that the 
culmination of humanity is, under God, the 
development of the zzdzvidual man. 

So, too, the ideal of true living has been 
lifted. No man is greater than his ideals. 
‘“‘ As a man thinketh’’—in his ideals—‘‘so is 
he.’ The military ideal is not yet gone; but 
itis going. ‘The intelle@ual ideal has come. 
And this in turn is to yield to the highest of 
all ideals, the moral ideal. Here Jesus Christ 
reigns supreme. ‘Time was when infidels 
threw their mud. It would not stick. It left 
unstained the pure whiteness of that one per- 
fect moral character. Men who hate His 
Church have to speak well of the Christ Him- 
self. The ideal One is rising on the world’s 
horizon. He is to sway the coming centuries. 

And as He Himself, so His Gospel under 
new formulas of thought, and new modes of 
expression, is getting to receive the uncon- 
scious recognition of men—a fact of great por- 
tent for the world’s moral future. To talk of 
the “‘sins of parents visited on their children 
to the third and fourth generation,’’? was re- 
garded as theological language; but now we 
have the fact asserted in the new science of 
Criminology. ‘‘Depravity,’’ once a stri@ly 
religious word, is now owned under the name 
of ‘‘heredity.’’ ‘‘ Atonement’’ is now in one 


198 Divine Providence 


of its aspects ‘‘ voluntary self-denial for the 
good of the other man.’’ ‘‘ Regeneration ’’ is 
‘‘another life coming into one’s ideal and in- 
spiration; ’’ and we talk sociologically of ‘‘ de- 
generates.’’ A humanly perfect Christ is now 
claimed as a necessity of thinking, if we are 
to think toward a moral standard; and the inevi- 
table step must be taken presently, of acknowl- 
edging a Divine Christ as a necessity of 
man’s position as fallible and needing a Divine 
Guide, as sinful and needing a Divine Savior.* 
Immortality is now seen to be ‘‘involved in 
eternal morality.’’ ‘‘Inwardness of soul’’ is 
recognized as the only source of genuine out- 
wardness of conduct; since to ‘‘do right’’ is 
to act froma ‘‘ heart right in the sight of God.”’ 
All along these lines of thinking the best 
thought of thousands is moving, and they will 
wake presently to find that what they had 
discarded in religion they have virtually come 
to own in philosophy. The bud gives large 
promise of the future flower. 

Add to all this trend the Scriptural concep- 
tion of the ‘‘ Kingdom of God.’’ ‘There is 
getting to be an overmastering expectation of 
a great future for the world. Men are com- 
ing tosee that it must be a moral future. 

They will be compelled, after their experi- 


* ‘““ We must look for some such being as can be a World’s 
Regenerator, making good the fact that God has not created us 
for a lost condition but for salvation.’’—Bushnell, ‘‘ Christ and 
Salvation.”’ 


r Future Providential Disclosures 199 


mentation elsewhere, to take up Christ’s idea of 
“the kingdom.’’ All that this phrase may 
hold in itself we can not know. ‘This at least 
we can understand, that it means the vezgn of 
righteousness on the earth.* A great future 
toward which Providence is conducting us 
awaits the human race. ‘Then Providence in 
world-wide affairs will be vindicated. Then 
mysteries in human history will be laid open 
for our wonder and delight. ‘Then men will 
see how God has managed not only good but 
evil also; the latter compelled, despite its 
own nature, to serve some purpose in the vast 
plans of God. 

As there is a future for the race in this 
world, so there is an immortality beyond this 
world for the individual. Both fa&ts do much 
to dissipate the remaining darkness. It might 


* “<The variety of aspects of Christ’s doctrine of the kineg- 
dom shows how difficult it must be to sum them all up under 
a single formula. In the Gospel of John the idea is not so 
prominent, but recedes behind that of ‘life.’ In the Epistles 
it is more decidedly in the background. Instead of ‘ the king- 
dom’ itis Christ Himself who is made prominent. Peter does 
not use the expression; James only once. The Pauline theology 
makes no attempt to fit into this conception. It is obvious 
that Christ does not always use this expression (the kingdom) 
in the same sense. Sometimes one aspect, sometimes another 
of His rich complex idea is intended by this term. Sometimes 
it is a power within the soul of the individual; sometimes it is a 
leaven in the world; sometimes it is a mixed visible society; 
sometimes itis that society under its ideal aspect; sometimes 
the totality of its blessings and powers; sometimes it is the 
future kingdom of God in its heavenly glory and perfec- 
tion.”’—Prof. Orr, ‘‘Christian View of God and the World.” 
Pages 405-6. 


200 Divine Providence 


even be claimed that a man who sees the 
rational and moral trend of things now and 
who believes as well in a moral immortality, 
has assurance of the wise outcome of provi- 
dential plan. He can trust all with God. 
Men are not orphans. God reigns in that 
immortality before us. It is true that we 
shall not be omniscient. We may have to 
exercise there, as here, the virtue of faith. 
‘He that believeth,’’ there as here, ‘‘ hath 
eternal life.’’ Trust, that basis of love for all 
finite beings, brings in any world not only sal- 
vation from sin, but becomes the condition of 
eternal progress. Browning sings: 


‘Only grant a second life, I acquiesce 
In this present life as failure; count Misfortune’s 
assaults 
Triumphs, not defeats, assured that loss 
So much the more exalts the gain about to be.” 


And there are men who under the pressure of 
present calamities get relief both for brain and 
heart by this reference to the life beyond. 
And what justifies man in his continuous 
faith, justifies in the end his God as well. 
For God, reverently be it said, needs also that 
future immortality in which to make manifest 
more completely His great providential plan. 
It must extend onward into that coming 
eternity. ‘There is a great and beautiful sense 
in which it is said, ‘‘ He only hath immortal- 


Future Providential Disclosures 201 


ity.’”’ Our immortality, an endowment of 
our manhood, that puts emphasis on every act 
of our probation, came from Him in whose 
image we were made and to whose image it is 
the plan of His grace to restore us. ‘Thus we 
get back toGod. Evidently the vast develop- 
ments of these last centuries are tending to- 
ward a completion. ‘he Kingdom of Heaven 
is the culmination of the earthly history of 
the race. And this restoration in Christ is 
the theme of revelation and the goal of 
Kternal Providence. We may repeat the 
question with which this discussion began: 
‘‘Can there be a loftier conception than this— 
the final end of the universe ts God ?”? 

And so there is just enough about our per- 
sonal immortality revealed to us to give us 
happy certainty, and just enough is veiled in 
happy obscurity to make us devoutly obedient, 
submissively trustful, and triumphantly hope- 
ful in God’s unslumbering Providence and 
gracious promise. 

With such a faith we may be singing pil- 
grims journeying toward the world of per- 
petual song: 


‘‘Whate’er may change, in Him nochange is seen, 
A glorious sun, that wanes not nor declines; 
Above the clouds and storms He walks serene, 
And sweetly on His people’s darkness shines; 
All may depart; I faint not, nor repine, 
While I my Savior’s am, while He is mine. 


202 Divine Providence 


While here, alas! I know but half His love, 
But half discern Him, and but half adore; 
But when I meet Him in the realms above, 
I hope to love Him better, praise Him more; 
And feel and tell amid the choir Divine, 
How fully Iam His, and He is mine.” 
HEnrRyY F. LYTE. 


i hut Lat 
Ay nae 


re be q 


(or 


fae) 


1008 6173 


0 


N 


; 


0 


1 


